The Last Juror is a 2004 legal thriller novel by John Grisham, first published by DoubleDay on Febuary 3, 2004.
Summary
In 1970,Shortly after the first person narrator, a 23-year-old college drop-out by the name of Willie Traynor, comes to Clanton, Mississippi and decides to buy the local newspaper, The Ford County Times paper spontaneously for fifty-thousand dollars, through money from his wealthy grandmother, a member of the notorious and scandalous Padgitt family brutally rapes and kills a young widow named Rhoda Kassellaw. The murderer, Danny Padgitt, is tried in front of a jury and i found guilty. Prior to being sentenced, Danny threatens to kill each of the jury members, should they convict him. Although they do find him guilty, the jury cannot decide whether to send him to life in prison or to Death Row , so Danny is sentenced to life in prison at the Mississippi State Penitentiary.
After only nine years in prison, Danny Padgitt is paroled and returns to Clanton. Immediately, members of the jury who had voted against his conviction to Death Row begin to die one after the other . Convinced that Danny is exacting his revenge, as promised, the judge of Clanton issues an arrest for Danny Padgitt. At Padgitt's trial, the former lover of Rhoda Kassellaw, Hank Hooten a schizophrenic, guns down Danny Padgitt in the courtroom by positioning himself on the balcony, attributing his action to hearing the voices of the victim's children in his head, convincing him to murder Danny and the three jurors who voted against his conviction to Death Row. After nine years of ownership, Willie sells The Ford County Times for 1.5 million dollars. The book ends with Willie writing the last obituary for the paper.
A must read!
JO PHILIP
