The Confession

A Novel

By: John Grisham

Narrated by: Scott Sowers

Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

An innocent man is about to be executed.

Only a guilty man can save him.

For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn’t understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn’t care. He just can’t believe his good luck. Time passes and he realizes that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He is relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed.

Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high-school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.

Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess.

But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?

"John Grisham is about as good a storyteller as we’ve got in the United States these days." ( The New York Times Book Review)

©2010 Belfry Holdings, Inc (P)2010 Random House Audio

Fiction meets Truth

Well-written and suitably gripping, Grisham weaves a tale that highlights the unfairness of the court system and the tragic permanence of some judicial rulings. When you have powerful people unfaltering in their need to be right combined with systemic inequities in charging and sentencing, it can result in marginalized populations being railroaded into lengthy convictions, or worse. This story, while fictional, tiptoes alongside the reality that faces death row prisoners still to this day.

WOW.

This was a great read but became more difficult the further I got in to it. Worth reading for sure, but it sure was sad. Grisham writes through the lens of reality. I don't much like reality. 😞

Great book

Thoroughly enjoyed this book, interesting and for some reason wasn’t expecting the outcome is a few areas. Would definitely recommend.

Grisham’s best most important work!!

I’ve read almost all of his books and this is his best and most relevant work of our time. I’m still crying.

Great book-you need patience to get to an emotional and very interesting ending

The book is very good. It is a little too slow in many areas but well worth listening to.

INCREDIBLE READ

Absolutely loved this book. Great from the beginning to the end. 10/10 would read again.

Best Grisham Book

This book is so worth listening to! I have gone through the loss of a child, and I will tell you that the reality of what this mother was feeling is so real. I can’t give any more details without ruining the story, but it is excellent.

Couldn’t put it down.

I greatly enjoyed this book. John Grisham has done it again! He had me after the first page. I couldn’t put it down.

Excellent read

I throughly enjoyed this novel and wonder how often the state executed an innocent person.

Couldn't Finish!!! Boring!!!

I started and stopped listening to this book three times!! Couldn't finish... I want to be entertained with some suspense, drama or mystery that is not predictable. After 10 chapters, I gave up on this one. I gave three stars because I love most of Grisham's books, Sycamore Row was good entertainment. I found that the narrator had long, dull, lackluster passages to read and it sounded like he was "reading" not Performing the novel. Boring