I felt that if the book was 50-75 pages or so shorter, my attention span would have always stayed at a high level, rather than fluctuating as often as it did. Further, while never boring to me, I felt that the pace of the book slowed down more times than I would have liked during a good portion of the middle of the book. While this plot is interesting and Grisham does a good job in making the reader feel a sense of 'being there'' throughout the book, Sycamore Row does not have the thrills often evident in a Grisham legal thriller, and certainly not like in A Time To Kill. This is definitely a challenging case for Brigance as, expected, each of the children and grandchildren hire their own lawyers to contest the will. Lawyer Jake Brigance, the hero from A Time To Kill, is hired as the lawyer for the estate to make sure that the dead man's directions are carried out exactly as instructed. The plot of Sycamore Row is built around a handwritten will prepared shortly before a very ill, very wealthy man from small town Clanton, Mississippi kills himself and leaves the vast majority of his large estate to his African-American maid and nothing to his children and grandchildren. Be aware, however, If you pick up Sycamore Row because you anticipate it to be as entralling and exciting as A Time To Kill, you are liable to be a bit disappointed. N Sycamore Row, Grisham returns to the setting and brings back several of the memorable characters first introduced in A Time To Kill that helped establish him as one of the most popular storytellers writing today. Why did he choose to kill himself on the desolate piece of land known as Sycamore Row?Īnd what was it that Seth and his brother witnessed as children that, in his words, 'no human should ever see'? What made him write that last-minute will leaving everything to a poor black woman named Lettie Lang? The vultures are circling even before the body is cold: the only subject more incendiary than money in Ford County is race, and this case has both.Īs the relatives contest the will, and unscrupulous lawyers hasten to benefit, Jake searches for answers to the many questions left by Seth Hubbard's death. Seth has left 90 per cent of his vast, secret fortune to his housemaid. Jake Brigance has never met Seth Hubbard, or even heard of him, until the old man's suicide note names him attorney for his estate. As filled with twists as it is with legal mastery, Sycamore Row proves beyond doubt that John Grisham is in a league of his own. In the long-awaited successor to the novel that launched his phenomenal career, John Grisham brings us the powerful sequel to A Time to Kill.

Sycamore row book