Search - The Chamber

I've read every one of John Grisham's books and while I like almost all of them, I feel that his best work was done in his first 5 books, those being A Time To Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, and The Chamber. The Chamber, to me, is the most powerful among these books because more than any other book by Grisham, it brings a hot button justice issue out in the open and it challenges the way people think about that issue. It is just as simple to say "an eye for an eye" as it is to say that any killing is wrong and this book definitely makes you consider both sides of the issue.

The ending scene is, without a doubt, the most power scene that you will find in any Grisham book. I am not a very emotional person but I can say that I was moved to tears by The Chamber's final pages. If you're a Grisham fan or a book enthusiast of any kind or even if you have a strong stance on either side of the capital punishment debate, you simply must read The Chamber.

Of Grisham's novel, this is one of my favorites. The issue of the death chamber, of what is truth, what is lies and what lies past in times that still haunts everyone today.... Hatred, racism, murder, pain... An excellent read.

I liked many of John Grisham's novels up until the last two I've read. I have recently read The Street Lawyer and The Chamber and was severely dissapointed. It became obvious to me that Grisham is a liberal as he seems to victimize the criminals in his books and make the conservatives out to be the bad guys. I got tired of the political rhetoric and will likely refrain from reading any more of his books.

Very good book. John Grisham knows how to tell a story!

The Chamber is an epic-like excursion into many of the issues regarding the gas chamber as a method of execution. The main protagonist is an old man who participated in a terrorist bombing of a Jewish attorney in Mississippi during the height of KKK activity.

The other key character is his grandson, a fresh-faced attorney from a large Chicago-based law firm who only "discovered" his grandfather a few years earlier. He is his grandfather's last chance.

This novel is peppered with facts about the gas chamber and about the litigation of the death penalty in general. The characterization of a large number of characters is deep and it makes you sympathize with a character as hateful as Sam Cayhall.

This moves at a slower pace than many of his other novels, but this allows for greater character development, which I really enjoyed. I felt that I knew the characters as the novel was developing. I found this refreshing as many novels these days seem to skip the development of characters.