Product Description

In 1970, a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Local newspaper editor Willie Traynor reported the details of the horrifying crime. The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi, threatening revenge against the jurors if they convict him, but guilty he was found and sentenced to life in prison. In Mississippi in 1970, "life" didn't necessarily mean "life," and nine years later Danny Padgitt gets parole. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1377830 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 372 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Grisham has spent the last few years stretching his creative muscles through a number of genres: his usual legal thrillers (The Summons, The King of Torts, etc.), a literary novel (The Painted House), a Christmas book (Skipping Christmas) and a high school football elegy (Bleachers). This experimentation seems to have imbued his writing with a new strength, giving exuberant life to this compassionate, compulsively readable story of a young man's growth from callowness to something approaching wisdom. Willie Traynor, 23 and a college dropout, is working as a reporter on a small-town newspaper, the Ford County Times, in Clanton, Miss. When the paper goes bankrupt, Willie turns to his wealthy grandmother, who loans him $50,000 to buy it. Backed by a stalwart staff, Willie labors to bring the newspaper back to health. A month after his first issue, he gets the story of a lifetime, the murder of beautiful young widow Rhoda Kasselaw. After being raped and knifed, the nude Rhoda staggered next door and whispered to her neighbor as she was dying, "Danny Padgitt. It was Danny Padgitt." The killer belongs to an infamous clan of crooked highway contractors, killers and drug smugglers who live on impregnable Padgitt Island. Willie splashes the murder all over the Times, making him both an instant success and a marked man. The town is up in arms, demanding Danny's head. After a near miss (the Padgitts are known for buying themselves out of trouble), Danny is convicted and sentenced to life in prison. As he's dragged out of the courtroom, he vows revenge on the jurors. Willie finds, to his consternation, that in Mississippi life doesn't necessarily mean life, so in nine years Danny is back outâ€"and jurors begin to die. Around and through this plot Grisham tells the sad, heroic, moving stories of the eccentric inhabitants of Clanton, a small town balanced between the pleasures and perils of the old and the new South. The novel is heartfelt, wise, suspenseful and funny, one of the best Grishams ever.
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From AudioFile
Michael Beck's narration successfully captures the ambiance of life in Mississippi in this story of justice, revenge, and the interweaving of lives in a small town. As told by Willie Traynor, a college dropout who buys the local paper in 1973, the story's central thread is the trial of Danny Padgett for the murder of a single mother and the ways it affects the town for years to come. Beck has Willie's voice and personality from the first sentence and is equally successful in capturing the people Willie comes to care about during the years he spends there. Although some minor characters sound a bit alike, this is a minor quibble in a novel that encompasses so many. At the end, the listener almost feels if he knows the people of Clinton as well as Willie does--and hates to leave them. M.A.M. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
John Grisham is the author of Skipping Christmas, The Summons, A Painted House, The Brethren, The Testament, The Street Lawyer, The Partner, The Runaway Jury, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, and A Time to Kill. He lives with his family in Mississippi and Virginia.


From the Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

What Book?
I have to say, in all the many hours of reading I have done over my life, I have rarely forgotten reading a book, especially a book I must have read in the past few years. This was one of them. Very below par for Grisham.

Just not that good.
When I first started reading John Grisham, I was impressed by the pace of his stories. I really enjoyed the legal thriller, with enough twists and turns to make you keep flipping pages. With "The Last Juror" Grisham has gone back to his formula, but only somewhat. I really feel that his attempts to merge a "touch-feely" theme (A Painted House was great) with his tried and true fast-aced legal drama/action has been a dismal failure. I guess I expect certain things out of a "Grisham" book, the same as you'd expect the same from a Dan Brown book. While I appreciate his desire to branch out and grow as an author, this one missed the mark.

Grisham does it again
Only a hand full of great American writers come to mind when I go shopping for a book------I usually think first of Grisham (THE FIRM) then onto a classic such as Steinbeck (EAST OF EDEN) and on to McCrae (BARK OF THE DOGWOOD). So when one of my favorites comes out with something new (and this was new for me) I jump at the chance to read it. So it was with THE LAST JUROR. Grisham's experimentation with new styles and voices has been an interesting journey for his readers. This side trip back to Ford County was his first since The Chamber, cast as a first person account of a young man's pursuit of himself. The characters were interesting, and the dialog as genuine as Grisham readers have come to expect. One thing I have enjoyed about Grisham's legal novels has been his realistic depictions of many ethical dilemma faced by his protagonists. In The Last Juror, numerous ethical challenges await the young editor whose voice tells the story. The reader is never sure that Willie recognizes that he is straying, which would not be so problematic if we weren't left to doubt whether Grisham recognizes them either. He seems very comfortable with the editor as advocate and participant. Willie makes several decisions that seem unlikely or at best ill-advised that Grisham seems to support. The book was enjoyable, but I was never tempted to sit up all night to get it finished. On the bright side, I intend to add it to a list of extra-credit readings for my journalism students and challenge them to resolve Willie's problems in ways more appropriate than those he chose.