In the corridors of Chicago's top law firm:

Twenty-six-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink  of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it  all for a death-row killer and an impossible case.  

Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State  Prison:

Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman  and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty  for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of  chances -- except for one: the young, liberal Chicago  lawyer who just happens to be his grandson. While  the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while  the protesters gather and the TV  cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes  to save his client. For between the two men is a  chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets --  including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall's  life...or cost Adam his.

"A dark and  thoughtful tale pulsing wit moral uncertainties...  Grisham is at his best."  --People.

"Compelling... Powerful...  The Chamber will make readers think  long and hard about the death penalty." --  USA Today.

"His best  yet." -- The Houston Post.  

"Mesmerizing... with an authority and  originality... and with a grasp of literary  complexity that makes Scott Turow's novels pale by  comparison -- Grisham returns." -- San  Francisco Chronicle.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from John Grisham's The Litigators.

**

Amazon.com Review

"The decision to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease." So begins Grisham's legal leviathan The Chamber, a 676-page tome that scrutinizes the death penalty and all of its nuances--from racially motivated murder to the cruel and unusual effects of a malfunctioning gas chamber.

Adam Hall is a 26-year-old attorney, fresh out of law school and working at the best firm in Chicago. He might have been humming Timbuk 3's big hit, "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades," if it wasn't for his psychotic Southern grandfather, Sam Cayhall. Cayhall, a card-carrying member of the KKK, is on death row for killing two men. Knowing his uncle will surely die without his legal expertise, Hall comes to the rescue and puts his dazzling career at stake, while digging up a barnyard of skeletons from his family's past. Grisham fans expecting the typical action-packed plot should ready themselves for a slower pace, well-fleshed-out characters, and heavy doses of sentimentalism.

From Publishers Weekly

The chamber in question is the gas chamber at the Mississippi State Penitentiary--and for 69-year-old Sam Crayhall, the road thence has been many years long. Sam was twice tried and twice acquitted for murder after a 1967 Ku Klux Klan scare bombing accidentally killed the twin sons of the intended target; 14 years later he was tried a third time, convicted and sentenced to death. Now, in 1990, a young Chicago lawyer, employed by the firm that represented Sam but which he has just unceremoniously dumped, wants Sam as a client. Adam Hall, the 26-year-old rookie, is Sam Crayhall's grandson. Adam's efforts to save this splendid curmudgeon from death form the center of Grisham's quietly compelling novel, a hub from which the far-reaching spokes of personal dramas extend. The despair of prison life has rarely been so grippingly evoked--no riots or dazzling escapes here, just a drab, pervasive dailiness. And the gradually revealed dysfunctions of the Crayhalls prove both surprising and affecting. This ranks as top-notch Grisham and reveals new dimensions to his talent: the focus on character, the credible emotion and the simple moments of human connection bear comparison to Grisham's work in A Time to Kill . The prose, too, has more subtlety and texture than Grisham has previously exhibited. Though the countdown to an execution is a well-worn plot device, it has seldom been as effective, especially in the novel's last 100 pages. Readers can almost hear the cogs of justice turning ever faster--or is that the sound of Grisham's fans stampeding the bookstores for this riveting read? 2.5 million first printing; Literary Guild main selection; audio rights to BBD audio; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.