Book Report #195 - The Confession

The Confession by John Grisham

Donte Drumm, a black high school football player, was convicted of raping and murdering a popular white high school cheerleader named Nicole. He confessed, so he must have done it, right? The thing is, he had an alibi and was tortured into a confession in a 15-hour ordeal with some cops. Everything was stacked against him, including the egos of the people in charge of his trial and conviction.

The week he's scheduled for his execution on death row, nine years after entering prison, a man named Travis Boyette asks to speak to a preacher in a church hundreds of miles from Donte's hometown of Slone in Texas. Boyette says he's a convicted rapist living in a halfway-house nearby. He's dying of a brain tumor and wants to come clean--it's he who raped and killed Nicole, and he can produce the body.

The preacher is torn but eventually decides to drive him to Texas to try to stop the execution, even though he knows he will be helping Travis violate his parole. Donte's lawyer, Robbie Flack, and his team scramble to do everything they can to get a stay, including getting the key witness to confess to perjury. Everything is gripping, as per Grisham's usual mastery, and the drive to Slone requires a chunk of time out of one's day because it's impossible to walk away as the minutes tick by to Donte's execution. Meanwhile the town of Slone is devolving into a race riot.

I don't want to include any spoilers so I'll only take you so far.

General consensus: Dovetails with Grisham's work of nonfiction, The Innocent Man. This story gets under your skin. You get the ordeal from the eyes of everyone involved--Donte's family, Nicole's family, the local police, DA, and judge, the legal team defending Donte, the preacher trying to do what's right. You get to see prison and death row from Donte's eyes. It's hard-hitting and important.