Book Review / The Guardians by John Grisham

In the small north Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues behind. There were no witnesses, no real suspects, no one with a motive. The police soon settled on Quincy Miller, a young black man who was once a client of Russo’s.

Quincy was framed, convicted, and sent to prison for life. For twenty-two years he languished in prison with no lawyer, no advocate on the outside. Then he wrote a letter to Guardian Ministries, a small innocence group founded by a lawyer/minister named Cullen Post.

Guardian handles only a few innocence cases at a time, and Post is its only investigator. He travels the South fighting wrongful convictions and taking cases no one else will touch. With Quincy Miller, though, he gets far more than he bargained for. Powerful, ruthless people murdered Keith Russo, and they do not want Quincy exonerated.

They killed one lawyer twenty-two years ago, and they will kill another one without a second thought.

Published:     15th October 2019
Publisher:  Doubleday
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Bought

 

MY REVIEW

 

I have discovered that one of my favourite thriller plot lines is when the murder or action has been committed at the beginning of the novel and the rest of the novel is trying to figure out what happened and who done it.  I hadn't realised until recently that was a theme that I tend to gravitate towards quite often.   This novel was one of those style stories. You have someone shot dead at their desk with assumedly no clues left behind and no motives.  What follows is police making assumptions, maybe, an arrest and then an organisation called the Guardian Ministries, who are an innocent group, are contacted to help prove that person who was arrested previously may not have done it. 

What I loved the most was both the twists and turns in this novel and following an innocence group getting involved to try and prove the prisoner innocent.   Its always unbelievable but believable to me  that people can get arrested on assumptions and imprisoned when they are innocent.  That's not to say I am going to tell you if the prisoner in this story is innocent or not, that will be for you to decide if you pick up this book, but its an interesting process to follow and one that I had not read all that much of previously.