In an accompanying letter appointing Jake as attorney for his estate, Hubbard admits he has specifically cut out his two adult children, and urges Jake to ‘fight them…to the bitter end.’ The will leaves ninety per cent of Hubbard’s sizeable fortune to his black housekeeper Lettie Lang, ‘as thanks for her dedicated service and friendship.’ Not so the handwritten will that turns up in Jake Brigance’s in-tray the day after Hubbard’s death. A misanthrope with terminal cancer, the circumstances of Hubbard’s death prove uncomplicated. The novel starts strongly with the suicide by hanging of local businessman, Seth Hubbard. At thirty-five, Jake remains ‘as ambitious as ever’, though worries the pinnacle of his career is already behind him. Jake’s family is living in rented accommodation, the insurance claim on their house still unresolved. The case sees a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan violence in Ford County, Brigance and his family are threatened, and their house is burned down. Sycamore Row is the sequel to Grisham’s first novel, A Time To Kill, published in 1989 and made into a film in 1996. With Sycamore Row running to 447 pages, I didn’t have time to brush up on the 655-page A Time To Kill as well, and opted to watch the movie instead.Ī Time To Kill is the story of how white lawyer Jake Brigance defends black man Carl Lee Hailey before an all-white jury in Ford County, Mississippi, after Hailey kills the two white men responsible for the rape and attempted murder of his 10-year-old daughter. But asked to review it for radio and aware of Grisham’s phenomenal success - the man has sold 250 million books - I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. Sycamore Row by John Grisham isn’t a book I would normally pick up.

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