The master story teller John Grisham returns to where he started everything twenty five years ago. He takes his characters back to the court house in Clanton from where he started his first tale and got an immense amount of applause from the audience all over the world. The story is loaded with tense scenes and court confrontations. It is not that kind of a thriller where one finds a dead body every now and then. It is related to legal issues that appear on the scene because of the change of a will.
For those who loved books like The Whistler and The Reckoning this one is a real treat. The novel starts like any other routine novel in which a man is dying of cancer and instead of waiting for death he commits suicide. There is not much hue and cry as the death was obvious. Later however things go upside down when the people in the house come to know that there is a change in the will. Seth Hubbard before dying altered his will and nobody knows why but this thing brings catastrophic change in the life of his adult children, Jake and the black maid of the house.
The children don’t show readiness to accept the will because it includes the name of Jake and the maid as well. Thus the battle goes on in the marvelous voice of Michael Beck who is a real artist when it comes to court room drama. The narrator exactly knows when to lower his voice and when to use the vocal chords to their maximum limits. The story also moves back and forth in time telling the audience something in detail about the piece of land that was once called Sycamore Row.
