The Innocent Man
Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence. • LOOK FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES
“Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”—Entertainment Weekly
In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life, and let a true killer go free.
Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, The Innocent Man reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book no American can afford to miss.
Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction looks at the chilling true-crime story of two murders that rocked the sleepy town of Ada, Oklahoma in the ’80s—and examines the tragic injustice that ensued. Grisham unravels the case in methodical detail, introducing us to the two men who were wrongfully convicted while the real killer roamed free. Even with all we know about the fallibility of the criminal justice system today, The Innocent Man is still shocking. Grisham himself has said that if he had written this book as fiction, it would have seemed totally unbelievable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grisham's first work of nonfiction focuses on the tragedy of Ron Williamson, a baseball hero from a small town in Oklahoma who winds up a dissolute, mentally unstable Major League washout railroaded onto death row for a hometown rape and murder he did not commit. Judging by this author-approved abridgment, Grisham has chosen to present Williamson's painful story (and that of his equally innocent "co-conspirator," Dennis Fritz) as straightforward journalism, eschewing the more familiar "nonfiction novel" approach with its reconstructed dialogues and other adjustments for dramatic purpose. This has resulted in a book that, while it includes such intriguing elements as murder, rape, detection and judicial injustice, consists primarily of objective reportage, albeit shaded by the now-proven fact of Williamson's innocence. The absence of dialogue or character point of view could make for a rather bland audio. Boutsikaris avoids that by reverting to what might be called old-fashioned round-the-campfire storytelling, treating the lengthy exposition to vocal interpretations, subtle and substantial. He narrates the events leading up to the 1982 rape and murder of a young cocktail waitress with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, moving on to astonishment at the prosecution's use of deceit and false testimony to convict Williamson and Fritz and, eventually, elation at the exoneration of the two innocent men. Throughout, he maintains an appealing conversational tone, an effect made all the more remarkable by the book's nearly total absence of conversation. Simultaneous release with the Doubleday hardcover.
Customer Reviews
Caught and held me the whole way
I really enjoyed the story and am still gob-smacked at the truth of the tale.
A Great Story
A very interesting look into a shaky court and prison system. Captivating read.