Near the rural town of Clanton, Mississippi, little Tonya Hailey is brutally raped, beaten,
and left for dead by two drunken and remorseless men. The rapists are almost
immediately caught in a road side bar, where they have been bragging of their exploits.
When the men appear in court days later, Tonya's father Carl bursts out of the courthouse
basement, and executes them with an assault rifle. Murder or executions? Justice or
revenge? Carl trusts his life to only one man in town-local criminal lawyer Jake
Brigance, who dreams of famous cases, headlines, and the big time. Jake is about to face
the fight of his life, and he knows it. Not only is he up against Rufus Buckley-a tough,
ambitious district attorney who realizes that a murder conviction could help him gain
higher office-but he has a much bigger problem: the rapists are white, the judge is
white-and Carl is black. This is a trial sure to change forever the lives of everyone
involved. "A Time to Kill" is a riveting novel that challenges everything we think we
know about justice and equality.

John Grisham
A Time to Kill
Billy Ray Cobb was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks. At twenty-three he was
already a three-year veteran of the state penitentiary at Parchman. Possession, with intent
to sell. He was a lean, tough little punk who had survived prison by somehow
maintaining a ready supply of drugs that he sold and sometimes gave to the blacks and
the guards for protection. In the year since his release he had continued to prosper, and
his small-time narcotics business had elevated him to the position of one of the more
affluent rednecks in Ford County. He was a businessman, with employees, obligations,
deals, everything but taxes. Down at the Ford place in Clanton he was known as the last
man in recent history to pay cash for a new pickup truck. Sixteen thousand cash, for a
custom-built, four-wheel drive, canary yellow, luxury Ford pickup. The fancy chrome
wheels and mudgrip racing tires had been received in a business deal. The rebel flag
hanging across the rear window had been stolen by Cobb from a drunken fraternity boy at
an Ole Miss football game. The pickup was Billy Ray's most prized possession. He sat
on the tailgate drinking a beer, smoking a joint, watching his friend Willard take his turn
with the black girl.
Willard was four years older and a dozen years slower. He was generally a harmless sort
who had never been in serious trouble and had never been seriously employed. Maybe an
occasional fight with a night in jail, but nothing that would distinguish him. He called
himself a pulpwood cutter, but a bad back customarily kept him out of the woods. He had
hurt his back working on an offshore rig somewhere in the Gulf, and the oil company
paid him a nice settlement, which he lost when his ex-wife cleaned him out. His primary
vocation was that of a part-time employee of Billy Ray Cobb, who didn't pay much but
was liberal with his dope. For the first time in years Willard could always get his hands
on something. And he always needed something. He'd been that way since he hurt his
back.
She was ten, and small for her age. She lay on her elbows, which were stuck and bound
together with yellow nylon rope. Her legs were spread grotesquely with the right foot tied
tight to an oak sapling and the left to a rotting, leaning post of a long-neglected fence.
The ski rope had cut into her ankles and the blood ran down her legs. Her face was
bloody and swollen, with one eye bulging and closed and the other eye half open so she
could see the other white man sitting on the truck. She did not look at the man on top of
her. He was breathing hard and sweating and cursing. He was hurting her.
When he finished, he slapped her and laughed, and the other man laughed in return, then
they laughed harder and rolled around the grass by the truck like two crazy men,
screaming and laughing. She turned away from them and cried softly, careful to keep
herself quiet. She had been slapped earlier for crying and screaming. They promised to
kill her if she didn't keep quiet.
They grew tired of laughing and pulled themselves onto the tailgate, where Willard
cleaned himself with the little nigger's shirt, which by now was soaked with blood and
sweat. Cobb handed him a cold beer from the cooler and commented on the humidity.
They watched her as she sobbed and made strange, quiet sounds, then became still.
Cobb's beer was half empty, and it was not cold anymore. He threw it at the girl. It hit