The Last Juror

New York: Dell, 2004. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 4x1x6. No Stock Photos! We photograph every item. 486 pages; spine creasing, light edge wear; The story begins with the demise of a small-town newspaper, the Ford County Times, in 1970. Willie Traynor, 23-year-old former cub reporter for the paper, takes it over with money from his grandmother. The paper it creaks along until success comes with its first big story--the rape and murder of a young widow by Danny Padgitt, member of a local bootlegging family. Convicted, given a life sentence, and still utterly remorseless, Padgitt swears vengeance against the jurors who declared him guilty. When he is paroled nine years later, jurors begin to die. John Grisham began work on THE LAST JUROR in the late '80s, wanting to write novels set in fictional Ford County, Mississippi, but he was interrupted by the success of THE FIRM. THE LAST JUROR breaks out of the mold of Grisham's usual legal thrillers into a story about the growth of Willie Traynor from a callow young man to an older and wiser one.