In A Time to Kill by John Grisham you will be put in a fierce battle of revenge and justice. Several times throughout the story you will ask yourself is revenge justified depending on the situation. The story starts off with the description of a violent and heart breaking rape of a ten year old girl named Tonya Hailey. The vivid description will make your stomach churn and your eyes water. She cries for her daddy as she is beaten, raped and dumped in a lake to die. She is found barely breathing and afraid. She describes the two rapist, Billy Ray Cobb and Pete willard, two drug dealing rednecks who are notorious for getting in and out of jail. The two are found at a local bar drunk to the point of stupidity bragging about the little black girl they raped. They are arrested by the sheriff and brought into custody of the county jail. Everybody is waiting flooding the courtroom and hospital to see if Tonya will survive and to see if the rednecks will serve time. The most anxious person is Tonya’s father Carl Lee Hailey. He sits expressionless as his daughter goes in for surgery. He contemplates the actions he could take in the current situation. After a talk with a local lawyer named Jake Brigance, he buys a M-16 from an old war friend and does the only thing that he could see as suitable for the living scum. He got his revenge but in the end was put through jail, courtrooms and separation from his family. When reading this book a person really needs to ask themselves is revenge justified? And if so how far would you go and how much would you give up to get it.
While this book will get you questioning our legal system you have to pay tribute to the role of racism throughout the novel. When dealing with Carl Lee’s case a major part of the situation was how a black man killing a white man is different from a white man killing a black man.  The two rednecks were only going to be jailed for a couple of years for raping a ten year old black girl. But Carl Lee was on death row for his crime. Jake, Carl Lee’s attorney, had to take several factors into account when arguing this case. How many white men on the jury and the black population of the county. While it may seem silly to you or I that your race can affect jail time it played a major role in the outcome of his trial. Jake, having a daughter of his own, did not see Carl lee for his race but for what he had been through. Despite that fact he knew the struggles that Carl Lee would face in court. John Grisham really wanted to stress just how ridiculous it is that a person's race can determine how they are viewed in a courtroom. And how your race shouldn’t make a crime anymore acceptable.
This novel is perfect for anyone who loves crime and justice stories or anyone who loves an emotional roller coaster. Several times throughout the novel you will just need to stop and process what insanity you just read and other times you will want to throw the book at a wall for the disgusting actions of some human beings. I would highly recommend this novel to anybody and everybody. Take it from me, I personally love sci-fi and mystery novels but this book drew me in on the first page and I was hooked until the  last.