Prompt – A book you picked because the title caught your attention (I was on a jury once and found the whole thing really interesting).
Medium – Book
About the Book – Ruby Bozarth is a lawyer in a small Mississippi town. She is asked to represent a black college football player against a charge of murder. The murder is of the daughter of one of the richest families in the town, and Ruby soon finds undercurrents of hatred stirring through the town, especially racial hatred. She also notices that one of the jurors in the trial looks awfully shifty. Alongside this, Ruby meets Shorty, the owner of the town’s diner and a political scientist who is undercover with a white supremacist group. But can Ruby really trust anyone in the town?
My Rating – 6/10. There are a lot of things I liked about this book. I liked the way that it was split into two parts – the murder trial detailed above is actually only one half of the book – the other is a far more personal trial for Ruby. I really liked some of the characters, including the lovable Shorty, Ruby and her mentor Suzanne, who is a force to be reckoned with, and not your usual skinny, young heroine. I also really enjoyed the feeling of menace in the book, brought about by undercurrents of hatred rocketing through the town.
My main issue with the book is that in style, it is very, very similar to every single other James Patterson book that he has ever written (and I have another one to read before the end of this challenge…) James Patterson is a really prolific writer. He turns out around ten books a year, usually in conjunction with others – including famously, Bill Clinton. The problem is that because of the number of books he has written, the characters are often quite similar, the threat is often quite similar and the style is often quite similar too. His books are familiar and follow similar patterns, which I think is why he is so popular. It’s just not quite my scene. But, I can say (maybe this was due to his collaborator), the law court scenes in the book were exceptionally well executed and really intense.
Would I read it again? Probably not, it is currently on the charity shop pile (which gets bigger by the day!)
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