I really thought it was a better Grisham novel than most of Grisham's. I am slightly familiar with the setting and the author used it very effectively. ( )

Small town southern life and lots of twists and turns towards the end of this mystery. Swift pace made this story of seemingly unassailable evidence of guilt quite the page turner. Actually the basic clue to innocence--or rather the case for an alternative suspect--should have been obvious to the defendant and her lawyer (protagonists) rather than getting it at the last minute from their deus ex machina who keeps turning up. Surprise finale though. Which again someone might have suspected from the oddity of place. ( )

This was my Amazon Prime free pick. I enjoyed it. As far as I remember, I haven't read anything else by this author. Since I see this is book #1 in the series, I was a bit confused by some of the reviews that refer to "previous books in the series". I do see that one reviewer said she thought it was a spin-off of another series by the author.

I hadn't realized that in Tennessee the District Attorney General is referred to as "General". Since this series is supposed to center around Bocephus Haynes, I'm a bit surprised that the main character in this book is Helen Lewis rather than Bo.

What Bo did to get suspended from practicing law isn't fully addressed in this novel. I do have sympathy for his character. He's lost his wife; his wife's parents, the father in particular, want to keep his kids away from him; he's had to tell his son, who would rather live with him, to say he wants to live with his grandparents because he wants his son to protect his daughter. I'm glad to see him turn it around and convince the courts that he is a fit parent for his children.

There are some plot twists at the end that I wasn't expecting. I'm not sure a reader could have anticipated them (at least some of them) because Helen wasn't very forthcoming with information that might have allowed readers to guess. In fact, I'm not very clear on whether she told her lawyer (Bo) the full truth or not about what happened. Since I thought her character had been set up to be the epitome of justice, it surprised me that she was willing to let someone else take responsibility (even if only assumed by the jury) for a crime he didn't commit (and in the process create reasonable doubt allowing the person who accidentally committed the crime to go free). The fact that she later doesn't prosecute the person who created the reasonable doubt for that crime but only does so for other crimes doesn't really mitigate that it's bad ethics. ( )

Unsympathetic characters, mistakes in the writing with consistency. ( )

Bocephus Haynes is a down and out lawyer at the beginning of this book after his wife was killed and he was acquitted of the murder of his biological father. The book opens with him losing permanent custody of his two children to their mother's parents. When District Attorney General Helen Lewis of Pulaski, Tennessee, asks him to represent her for the murder of her ex-husband, Bo's journey back to competence and respectability begins. ( )