Give it a miss. Review on Chamber, The - John Grisham

If you are a John Grisham fan, like I am, you will be bitterly disappointed by this work of fiction. If you are just checking out Grisham, dont start off with this one, or you will be put off forever. Try the Pelican Brief, The Firm or The Brethren first.

This is the story of a convicted murderer, Sam Cayhall, and his lawyer grandson, Adam, who is trying to save Gramps from being executed in the gas chamber. Now, good lod Sam is nearly 70, and has been convicted for killing 2 kids 23 years earlier. While he was only an accomplice in that crime, he was also responsible for killing at least 5 others. But in the true tradition of all anti-death penalty books, Adam spares no efforts in trying to save his Grandpa from the Chamber. As you can see, the story line is pretty thin, there is no real villain, and the suspense is driven entirely by whether or not Adam will succeed in his last-minute, gangplank appeals to save Sam from the cyanide gas.

The book is embellished with detailed descriptions of how an execution is carried out using cyanide gas, how the gas chamber is constructed, how the body is decontaminated following the execution, and how horrible the actual execution is. Fanciful reading for those with a morbid streak of curiosity, but utterly boring otherwise. The sheer length of the book also puts you off, and it took me nearly 10 days to finish going through its 486 pages. Compare this to the 2 days it took me to finish the Firm, and similar periods for the better known works of Grisham!