Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time, it's going to be murder. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His heirs, to no one's surprise - especially Troy's - are circling like vultures. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and looking for a way to die. Readers can almost hear the cogs of justice turning ever faster-or is that the sound of Grisham's fans stampeding the bookstores for this riveting read? 2.5 million first printing Literary Guild main selection audio rights to BBD audio major ad/promo.Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States.

Though the countdown to an execution is a well-worn plot device, it has seldom been as effective, especially in the novel's last 100 pages. The prose, too, has more subtlety and texture than Grisham has previously exhibited. This ranks as top-notch Grisham and reveals new dimensions to his talent: the focus on character, the credible emotion and the simple moments of human connection bear comparison to Grisham's work in A Time to Kill. And the gradually revealed dysfunctions of the Crayhalls prove both surprising and affecting. The despair of prison life has rarely been so grippingly evoked-no riots or dazzling escapes here, just a drab, pervasive dailiness. Adam's efforts to save this splendid curmudgeon from death form the center of Grisham's quietly compelling novel, a hub from which the far-reaching spokes of personal dramas extend. Adam Hall, the 26-year-old rookie, is Sam Crayhall's grandson. Now, in 1990, a young Chicago lawyer, employed by the firm that represented Sam but which he has just unceremoniously dumped, wants Sam as a client.

Sam was twice tried and twice acquitted for murder after a 1967 Ku Klux Klan scare bombing accidentally killed the twin sons of the intended target 14 years later he was tried a third time, convicted and sentenced to death. The chamber in question is the gas chamber at the Mississippi State Penitentiary-and for 69-year-old Sam Crayhall, the road thence has been many years long.

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