BooK REVIEWS
THE CHAMBER I JoHN GRISHAM Sam Cayhill killed two Jewish children in a LoNDON: CENIURY, 1994 196 7 Ku Klux Klan bombing He now sits $29.95 on Mississippi's Death Row, only weeks *************** away from execution Adam Hall, a young As most of the world knows, a John Grisham lawyer just out of law school (where, we are novel generally involves a lawyer-hero - or reminded at various times in the book, he law student-hero, in the case of The Pelican graduated second in his class and edited the Brief - who is involved in some kind of Law Review) persuades his employer, a large struggle, or who faces some kind of Chicago law firm and the firm previously dilemma For Mitch McDeere in The Firm, employed by Cayhall before he dispensed it was a struggle against his law firm, a front with their services, to send him to Mississippi for the Chicago mafia For Darby Shaw in to defend Cayhall. As it turns out, Adam is The Pelican Brief, it was a struggle to escape Sam's grandson, a fact initially only known assassins sent to kill her by the man to Adam And Adam has joined this Chicago responsible for the killing of two US Supreme law firm with the intention of defending his Court Justices For Jake Brigance in A lime grandfather Why a young, Northern liberal to Kill, it was a struggle to defend a black man lawyer seeks to defend an old, Southern racist charged with killing the white men responsible on Death Row, family connection for the rape of his daughter in the deep South notwithstanding, is a question dealt with early And for Reggie Love in The Client, it was a in the novel Subsequently, the novel struggle to keep her "client'', a small boy, fiom explores the relationship which develops being killed, again by the mafia between Sam and Adam and their last-ditch attempts to keep Sam ft om the gas chamber Until The Chamber, these struggles have Along the way, Adam (and the reader) faces usually lacked a moral dimension Ihe the morality of capital punishment, the protagonist has always been too busy trying ugliness of racial prejudice and bigotry and to stay alive, too busy trying to escape the all the questions associated with both mafia or corrupt businessmen, to worry much about the morality or ethics of their actions Unusually for a Grisham novel - although not or the actions of others I he Chamber, so unusual for other novels in this genre (for however, is quite different from John example, Richard North Patterson's Degree of Grisham's four previous novels Although Guilt and Scott Iurow's Burden of Proof) - the two main characters are involved in The Chamber almost demands an emotional related struggles to stay alive (well, one of reaction The issues with which this novel them, anyway), the novel also offers a debate deals are, by their nature, sensitive And the on the morality of capital punishment The main characters are often fragile and Chamber is Grisham's most ambitious, uncertain The final chapters of this book "serious" book to date While it is not the are sometimes really difficult to read because most entertaining of his books - I have yet of the issues involved. I didn't think John to read a novel that is as entertaining and Grisham had it in him enjoyable as A Time to Kill and that keeps Ihe Chamber is an excellent book the pages turning as that novel does (high praise, I know) - it is the most thoughtful and David Hodgkinson thought-provoking High Court of Australia
258 Australian IAW LIBRARIAN 2(4) August 1994