Dell Random House, New York 2021

John Grisham has written so many legal thrillers that he has probably lost track.

In this “Jake Brigance Novel” the lawyer Brigance in the small town Clanton, Mississippi, is forced by the judge to defend a 16-year-old who has murdered a police officer. The victim was the boyfriend of his mother and turns out to have brutally attacked his girlfriend, hit her son and raped her 14-year-old daughter. So “a time for mercy”? But the local police force and the community are strictly against it. Brigance and his family are attacked, he is in danger of losing all his clients.

 As usual with Grisham, the court trial is the center and masterpiece of the novel. but Grisham is equally interested in pointing out several other social topics, like racial tensions and adoption problems and so the action loses the necessary concentration and the reader her interest.