Politics & Social Issues - Fiction, Thrillers, Crimes - Fiction, Books at the Movies, Occupations - Fiction

The Chamber

Name: The Chamber
Author: Grisham, John
ISBN: 9780440245940

by Grisham, John

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

In the corridors of Chicago's top law firm:

Twenty-six-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case.

Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison:

Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances — except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson. While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather and the TV cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes to save his client. For between the two men is a chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets — including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall's life...or cost Adam his.

"A dark and thoughtful tale pulsing wit moral uncertainties... Grisham is at his best." —People.

"Compelling... Powerful... The Chamber will make readers think long and hard about the death penalty." — USA Today.

"His best yet." — The Houston Post.

"Mesmerizing... with an authority and originality... and with a grasp of literary complexity that makes Scott Turow's novels pale by comparison — Grisham returns." — San Francisco Chronicle.

The author of the number-one bestsellers The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client has written another spellbinding tale of legal intrigue sure to hit bestseller lists this summer. Twenty-two years after the bombing deaths of a civil rights activist's two sons, the Klansman on death row for their murders is mysteriously aided in his last appeal by a young lawyer in a major firm. But why?

About the Author, Grisham, John

JOHN GRISHAM is the author of Skipping Christmas, The Summons, A Painted House, The Brethren, The Testament, The Street Lawyer, The Partner, The Runaway Jury, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, and A Time to Kill.

Biography

As a young boy in Arkansas, John Grisham dreamed of being a baseball player. Fortunately for his millions of fans, that career didn't pan out. His family moved to Mississippi in 1967, where Grisham eventually received a law degree from Ole Miss and established a practice in Southaven for criminal and civil law. In 1983, Grisham was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, where he served until 1990.

While working as an attorney, Grisham witnessed emotional testimony from the case of a young girl's rape. Naturally inquisitive, Grisham's mind started to wander: what if the terrible crime yielded an equally terrible revenge? These questions of right and wrong were the subject of his first novel, A Time to Kill (1988), written in the stolen moments before and between court appearances. The book wasn't widely distributed, but his next title would be the one to bring him to the national spotlight. The day after he finished A Time to Kill, Grisham began work on The Firm (1991), the story of a whiz kid attorney who joins a crooked law firm. The book was an instant hit, spent 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise.

With the success of The Firm, Grisham resigned from the Mississippi House of Representatives to focus exclusively on his writing. What followed was a string of bestselling legal thrillers that demonstrated the author's uncanny ability to capture the unique drama of the courtroom. Several of his novels were turned into blockbuster movies.

In 1996, Grisham returned to his law practice for one last case, honoring a promise he had made before his retirement. He represented the family of a railroad worker who was killed on the job, the case went to trial, and Grisham won the largest verdict of his career when the family was awarded more than $650,000.

Although he is best known for his legal thrillers, Grisham has ventured outside the genre with several well-received novels (A Painted House, Bleachers, et al) and an earnest and compelling nonfiction account of small-town justice gone terribly wrong (The Innocent Man). The popularity of these stand-alones proves that Grisham is no mere one-trick pony but a gifted writer with real "legs."

Good To Know

A prolific writer, it takes Grisham an average of six months to complete a novel.

Grisham has the right to approve or reject whoever is cast in movies based on his books. He has even written two screenplays himself: Mickey and The Gingerbread Man.

Baseball is one of Grisham's great loves. He serves as the local Little League commissioner and has six baseball diamonds on his property, where he hosts games.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Walter Goodman

So, let's begin with a word of reassurance. If you find your fingers racing through these 486 pages, it may signify merely that few of them demand close study. And as for putting the book down, I managed to do it without pain a score of times....Mr. Grisham has no pretensions to being a stylist. As with most other popular novels, the language does not bear inspection. Its main function is to deliver information, and you don't have to read absolutely every word, because all significant facts are repeated, usually more than once. Everything is made explicit; one's imagination is never imposed on. -- New York Times

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Tie-in edition with the forthcoming movie starring Gene Hackman and Faye Dunaway. (Oct)

Library Journal

Grisham aims for another best-seller and a movie? with a tale that hinges on the bombing of civil rights advocate Marvin Kramer's offices in 1967. His two sons are killed, and Klansman Sam Cayhall is convicted. Some 22 years later, as Cayhall approaches execution, a hot young lawyer asks to defend him.

Joe Collins

It's a foregone conclusion that Grisham's latest novel will be a best-seller, but now that he doesn't have to worry about making money, he's apparently decided to flex his literary muscles with a tale of death-row inmate Sam Cayhall and his lawyer-grandson Adam Hall. Grisham's reputation as a writer of lawyer espionage novels is well known, but he is equally adept at fleshing out characters of the modern South. We begin in 1967, when Mississippian and Klan member Cayhall helps bomb a Jewish lawyer's office and mistakenly kills the attorney's two young sons. Two trials with all-white juries wind up in mistrials, but eventually the intelligent Sam is convicted in 1981 and sentenced to the gas-chamber. By 1990, Adam, who has never met Sam, agrees to file his final appeals shortly before the execution. Like "The Firm" and other Grisham books, the plot is centered on a race against time, but there is little hint of cloak-and-dagger; in addition, a subplot that could exonerate Sam is, inexplicably, never developed. Grisham asserts that most prison officials are against the death penalty, or at least the gas chamber method, and he provides gruesome details of executions gone wrong. As usual, the dialogue is fast paced, witty, and screenplay-ready, and only near the end does it become mawkish in the midst of self-examination and tearful good-byes. Most ironic, however, is that Grisham fans will eat up this rather uncommercial tale.