The Confession by John Grisham/418 pages

A young black man has been charged with murdering a white classmate and is currently serving time on death row in a prison in Texas.  The execution is scheduled and lawyers are down to their last appeal.  Five days before the execution, and several hundred miles away, a man claiming to be the murderer shows up in a Lutheran minister's office confessing to the horrible crime.  I really enjoyed the first half of this book, the details of the case, the rush to save a wrongly accused man, the anguish that all the families go through but then the second half of the book gets bogged down with all the legal injustices. Grisham is a great storyteller, but when he gets on his soapbox and stops telling the story, I get bored. The portrayal of crooked politicians and lawmakers is probably not too far from the truth and the tensions between the black and white communities in a small town in the south are heartbreaking.  The book really makes you think about our legal system and the death penalty.