A Time to Kill

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderfully Gripping Novel
Review: In the rural town of Clanton, Mississippi, Tonya Hailey, a ten-year-old, girl is brutally raped by two drunken young men. The men are arrested, but before their trial, the girl's father, Carl Lee, takes justice into his own hands with an M-16 rifle. In John Grisham's best selling novel, A Time To Kill, Carl Lee's attorney and friend, Jake Brigance, must come up with a plausible defense in order to save his clients life. After all, some might consider Carl Lee's actions completely justified. There's one serious problem however--Carl Lee is black, and the two men he murdered were white. This doesn't fly in the moderately racist county, and soon the Ku Klux Klan is threatening Jake's life. Grisham's novel is wonderfully gripping. At 515 pages, it may seem a bit intimidating to some, but the action and development is constant. I myself generally prefer a quick read, but there is so much fascinating depth to this story that I had no problem with reading it over the course of a few weeks. Granted, it was so powerful I would have loved to just sit down and read it straight through, if only I had the free time. I would recommend this book to almost everyone, as it is truly a remarkable book. If you are a southerner who is easily offended by being considered racist, you may have some qualms with this book. Other than that, I can think of little reason for anyone to not read it.

Rating:
Summary: Its about Time!
Review: Finally, A Time to Kill, John Grisham's first novel, is a feature length movie. I just read this book, but I knew it was realeased in 1989. I'm only thirteen, and this was my first Grisham book. In this story, Grisham hits us with a subject that most might not like to discuss: child rape. Ten-year old Tonya Hailey is brutally raped and almost killed by two drunken rednecks; perhaps the saddest and hardest part to get through with the addition of little Tonya's dream of her father running to get her. After this horrid crime is committed, Tonya's father, Carl Lee exacts vengeance on the two rednecks, and kills them. He is put on trial, and lawyer Jake Brigance is introduced to us. He takes Carl Lee's case and must face his hated enemy, Rufus Buckley, in court. The days leading to the trial are filled with KKK threats, riots between blacks and the KKK, and several other chills and spills. Finally, the trial comes and the small town of Clanton, where the trial is held, is occupated by journalists, soldiers, KKK members, and thousands of blacks, as they all wait for the verdict on the edge of their seats..

Rating:
Summary: Icredible
Review: "A Time to Kill" really challenges the American legal system. Ideals and morality are put up against racism and prejudice. Has you rooting for Brigance the whole time. Outstanding book.

Rating:
Summary: Grisham's best
Review: A Time to Kill is, in my opinion, Grisham's finest work (standing just a little higher that The Firm). It was also Grisham's first book and I read somewhere that he had it privately published because, at the time, no-one would touch it. (Shows what unknown struggling authors have to put up with, doesn't it!). Anyway, the good news is that, after Grisham hit the top-sellers lists, A Time to Kill was republished and it, too, became a bestseller.

It's a gripping tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who has killed two white men (who raped his daughter). The tale is a mixture of the Grisham-style legal story and of America's tragic history of slavery and black repression. Grisham tells the story perfectly. His dialogue is spot on. There is one, superb passage where the local reverend is preaching to his flock. If you can imagine a 'Blues Brothers' type of scenario with 'I have seen the light' coming from the congretation as the preacher winds them up, you'll get the picture.

Carl Lee Hailey (the Vietnam war veteran) gets hold of an M-16, kills the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns for help to attorney Jake Brigance. Some of the local folk want to give Carl Lee a second medal for his action, but premeditated murder is hard to ignore, and anyway, the town is divided. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted. The KKK turns up the heat. The NAACP gets involved. Due to the publicity, a big local firm of lawyers get in on the act and try to outmaneuver Jake. Jake has a secret weapon though - his brilliant, but disbarred ex-partner.

As Amazon's own review says''Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy.' A superb book. A wonderful story, brilliantly written.

Rating:
Summary: A Time to Kill review
Review: On a scale of 1to 10 I rate John Grisham's A Time to Kill a very enthusiastic 10. Grisham is the absolute master when it comes to courtroom suspense. He brought out a problem in America that most choose to ignore. He also kept me turning the pages with the intrigue of A Time to Kill. But the characters were my favorite part; Jake Brigance and Carl Lee Hailey were to die for. A Time to Kill focused on the issue of racism in this country. Throughout the whole book they compared whites to blacks. It was said that if Carl Lee was white man and he killed two black men for raping his daughter, the killings would have gone unnoticed. This book brought out the truth. There are a lot of people who aren't racist, but there are a lot that are too. Like there is still the KKK and people who disrespect people who are different them. In the beginning the cased seem impossible to win, but Jin turns out alright. I hope this book will help everyone see the truth. I read this book in less then a week and it was a long book, but I couldn't put it down. There was always something going on and to find out. Grisham did a great job of keeping you interested. The drama never stops. The trial was the best part; you kept wondering what was going to happen tomorrow. Every witness had something interesting to say. Grisham definitely is the best at keeping all this law stuff interesting. Jake Brigance had to be my favorite character, he was absolutely perfect. A young lawyer facing a deadly problem in America. He had all the skill to take the case, but not the reputation. Carl Lee had my heart from the very beginning. He was an inspiration to everyone. Another one of my favorite characters was Jake's mentor Lucien who was supposed to be brilliant, but I thought he was funny. Sandra Bullock's character named Ellen Roark didn't make an entrance in to the book until the third half. I liked that better because that way she wasn't counted as a main character. Anyway, I just loved all the characters. They all seemed to fit together nicely by the end of the novel. So I absolutely give A Time to Kill a 10 because it was brilliant and suspenseful. It is now one of my favorite books of all time. A highly suggest that people read it because it gives you different perspectives about the whole racist issue and I know don't anybody who wouldn't enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This is not just a book, it is a spectacle to behold. I was literally biting my nails as this book reached its climax, as Clanton, Mississppi, a small unsuspecting southern town becomes the home of the biggest trial in the nation. The racial tension is this book is palpable, and it is the driving force behind what makes this story so compelling. This small town becomes a virtual war zone. Fantastic! I can't even find the words to describe how amazing and unbelievable a read this was!

Rating:
Summary: a time to kill
Review: A Time To Kill is set in Mississippi during racist times. The book a time to kill tells a story about a young black girl that gets rapped by two white guys. After the rape her the throw her out. Some people found her and took her home. Her father wanted to take justice into his own hands.
One part in the book tells how he got revenge on the two white guys. He shoots them in his face on the stairs and then he is charged for murders of to white men. The rest of the book is mostly about his courts and if he's guilty or not.
This book shows a lot prejudice actions and how the kkk was involved. I enjoyed reading this book and if you want to know more about racist times I recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Time to Kill
Review: Is race a main factor in our courts today? It all depends who you ask. Some people would say race is irrelevant. This book shows how race determines what the outcome in a trial could be.

It all began in Clanton, a small town located in Mississippi. One day a little girl was walking to the store when all a sudden she was jumped by two white men. The men beat and raped her. The girl's name is Tonya and name of the men are Ray Cobb and Pete Willard. The men were about to be tried in court when the girl's father whose name is Carl Lee decided to take revenge. He blasted Cobb and Willard into tiny pieces. Carl Lee hired a lawyer named Jake to defend him in court. Then the town of Clanton became a national spotlight. Hundred of journalists came to Clanton to cover the trial of Carl Lee. Even the KKK returend to Clanton, who were banned from the town 25 years ago. The trial was a long one. To find out if Carl Lee was found guilty or not guilty you have to read the book.

From my perspective, the book is well written thats why it is good. The book is kind of long, but I thought it was worth it. The only problem with the book it lacks interest half way through. The book was so good I even encouraged my sister and brother to read it. I hope you can enjoy the book the same way I did.

Rating:
Summary: A dissatisfied reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I recently finished reading a book titled A Time to Kill, and I have to say it was one of the most boring books that I ever had the misfortune of reading. The beginning is good there are these to white guys that rape this little girl, then the dad gets all heroic and shoots them up with an M16. After that the book just crawls on, I felt lucky when something remotly exciting happened every hundred pages or so. Not only that, the ending was very disapointing....well, less disappointing more completly unrealistic. All in all I would rather close my hand in a car door than read this book again, and if it was possible i would have given this book zero stars but the minimum was one.

Rating:
Summary: A Time to Kill Should Be Viewed as an American Classic
Review: A reasonable case could be made that John Grisham's A Time to Kill is the single most important work of fiction written in the past twenty-five years. It is the stunningly powerful story of one man's moral retribution in the face of a society hell bent on his humiliation, subjugation, and ultimately, his elimination. Carl Lee is a black man in the white-dominated town of Clanton, Mississippi who murders his young daughter's rapists. It is a chilling act of revenge that any father can identify with, even if they don't have the courage to follow through as Carl Lee does.

Jake Brigance plays a small-town street lawyer in the fictional world of Clanton, who takes on Carl Lee as his client. Jake is white. Carl is black. And the town of Clanton operates as a microcosm for all the racial misunderstanding and hatred in the American South.

It is the most compelling American novel about race since Harper Lee's devastating To Kill a Mockingbird, and one can not help but feel some of the emotional resonance of that American classic as it informs an all-new American classic. That John Grisham has been relegated to "popular fiction" status undercuts the power and profound truth in much of his work. Nowhere is that more evident than in A Time To Kill, the purest distillation of racial misunderstanding in an American novel in the latter part of the 20th Century.

Stacey Cochran