I haven’t kept up with everything John Grisham has written but I truly loved his early books and over the years have sampled enough to know what he’s doing and how. He was a bit uneven there for awhile and did a variety of styles and genres, to the dismay of many readers, but seems to have come up in excellent shape – “Terrific!” (Washington Posts)

*******
The Guardians
by John Grisham
2019 / 371 pages (Kindle)
Read by Michael Beck – 11h 50m
rating A++ / legal thriller
*******

This is classic Grisham legal crime with a major theme being the wrongfulness of the death penalty, especially considering the deep and rampant corruption often involved in the prosecution. The characters are, perhaps, a bit formulaic but the plot is fresh and exciting and there are

plenty of interesting twists and expertly developed tension, especially toward the end. Also, this time Grisham gets more gritty than I remember.

The plot involves a black man named Quincy Miller who, a couple decades earlier, was convicted of killing his divorce lawyer, Keith Russo, and has spent two full decades behind bars. Miller has protested his innocence from the start, but only now has real legal assistance in the form of Cullen Post, an ex-defense attorney and Episcopal priest turned “innocence lawyer” with a very small non-profit legal group called The Guardians dedicated But the plot mostly follows Cullen as he unwinds the real story – this is a multi-faceted gem.