Search - The Innocent Man

I usually read John Grisham because of his typical fast paced law dramas, but my husband had wanted to read this so I thought gave it a try when he was done. This is not your typical Grisham fiction. This was actually based on true story, but still contains the law drama.

The details and the writing are great, but the saga itself is kind drawn out. I understand that human drama can be long and trying but I was getting slightly bored in places.

One of the great things I did get was the ability to compare current law enforcement and forensics that we utilize now that are described in the first stages in this book.

Overall a good read. Not typical Grisham, but still the same great writing.

I've always been pro death penalty but this book has made me reconsider my values. I would've given it 5 stars but felt that Grisham inserted his opinion too much, as if he didn't trust his readers to see the injustice done to Ron Williamson and others who were actually innocent of the crimes they were accused of.

Writing fiction is very different from documenting an actual series of events.
Grisham's fiction books are real page turners and hard to put down. This one was about actual real events and should have been a compelling read but it was just dull reading.
I tried twice to wade through it before giving it away.

In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on the way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs & women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron's home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried & sentenced to death - in a trial littered w/lying witnesses &tainted evidence that would shatter a man's already broken life . . . and let a true killer go free

Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, John Grisham's first work of nonfiction reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence - a book no American can afford to miss.

The journalistic review of a most disturbing injustice of jailing the wrong man for murder was very interesting in the second half. There were so many purposely false steps in the prosecution that after a while I got bored with reading all of the things that went wrong. By far the most interesting part to me was the second half of the book which described the unraveling of the false accusations. The work of the Innocent Victim group of attorneys was breath taking. I also enjoyed the end of the book where the author told what had happened in the mean time to the people in the book. The most shocking was that the prosecuting district attorney in the small town is still in office.

Great book. Very enjoyable!