Author's next thriller Sycamore Row will see heroic lawyer of Grisham's 1988 bestseller 'fight for justice' once again
Twenty-five years after he made his first appearance, Jake Brigance, the young lawyer defending a black father who has killed his daughter's rapists in John Grisham's debut novel A Time to Kill, is set to return to the literary arena later this year.
Grisham and his publisher Knopf Doubleday announced that the bestselling legal-thriller author was writing a follow-up to 1988's A Time to Kill, in which Brigance will "fight … the good fight once again". Sycamore Row, out this autumn, will see Brigance forced to "fight for justice in a trial that could tear the small town of Clanton apart", said Knopf, promising that "the suspense never rests" in this latest outing from Grisham.
Clanton was also the setting for A Time to Kill, in which Brigance defended Carl Lee Hailey, on trial for murder after gunning down his daughter's white rapists. The novel was written after Grisham – then a lawyer who had been elected to the state House of Representatives – overheard the testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim; he was inspired to explore what would have happened if her father had murdered her attackers.
Grisham wrote the book in three years, getting up at 5am to work on it before he started his day job. He received a host of rejections from publishers, but the novel was eventually acquired by Wynwood Press, with 5,000 copies printed in 1988.
It was Grisham's second novel, The Firm, that made his name and allowed him to turn his hobby into a career: it became the bestselling novel of 1991, with the author's continuing success eventually prompting the reissue of A Time to Kill, which quickly became a hit. The debut went on to be adapted for film, starring Matthew McConaughey as Brigance.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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