top of page
reiperramorohuf

How A Time to Kill was born: John Grisham's journey from lawyer to novelist



"Lot of cases I've forgotten, but that one was so horrendous I've never forgotten it," the judge said. "He (Harris) obviously wanted to kill the girls. He stabbed one of them so many times, it bent the (barbecue) fork back. Somehow those girls survived."


He began taking acting lessons, but he soon discovered that his newly self-aware approach to the craft was getting in his way at auditions, and he stopped getting roles. When he finally landed a part in an indie film, Scorpion Spring, he thought he might improve his performance by returning to his instinctive acting skills, so he decided to take a different tack by not reading the script ahead of time. Instead of preparing, he spent some time mentally forming the drug runner character, and then he planned to give his performance in spontaneous freedom.




who wrote the book a time to kill



Two of the books Grisham is most well-known for also happen to be the very first two novels he ever released; The Firm and Time to Kill. The Firm, released in 1991, has sold more than seven million copies. It is the second novel that he wrote and is the gripping tale about a young man named Mitchell V. McDeere who, fresh out of law school, decides to work at a Memphis law firm, appeased by their generous offer of a high salary, new BMW, and nice house with low interest mortgage.


John Grisham is my favorite author. I have all his books (hardcover) with the exception of all of the Theordore Boone books (only 3). I wait every year patiently for their release. My favorite is The Partner (read it 3 times looking for a clue to its surprise ending and did not find it). Most of the time I read them twice as that is how much I enjoy your work. I was born and raised in Arkansas and now live in Florida, my sister lives in Southaven, Mississippi. I recognize a lot of the landmarks in the descriptions. All of your books are 5 star quality. Thank you Mr. Grisham for sharing your talent.


I have enjoyed the movies based on the books. However, I always read the book first and often find that the movie is never as good as the book. I love to all of John Grisham books. He is my al time favorite author.


John Grisham wrote A Time to Kill, a legal thriller, in 1989 while he was a practicing lawyer in Mississippi. While observing a trial in the courthouse near his practice, he witnessed the testimony of a 12-year-old who was raped and beaten, and was thus inspired to write this novel. It was an extremely emotional experience for him, and he began to imagine what would have happened if the father of the girl had decided to kill his daughter's rapist. It took him three years to write the story, with the encouragement of his wife, Renée. The book itself was a suspense thriller, and was John Grisham's first book.


Having finished the last pages, he sent the manuscript to New York and it was accepted by his new agent, Jay Garon, after over a dozen agents had passed. At the same time, Garon told Grisham to start writing another book, which would become his famous bestseller The Firm. In 1988, Wynwood Press bought the manuscript and printed a modest 5000 copies, which sold poorly except for in a few of Grisham's local Mississippi bookstores.


However, after his subsequent novels, such as The Pelican Brief and The Client, established him as a skilled writer of legal thrillers, interest in A Time to Kill reignited; the book was republished by Doubleday and Dell Publishing, and it became a bestseller.


Not all of John Grisham's books are legal dramas--sometimes he writes mysteries set in the South as well. A Painted House is set in the 1950s and is about a seven-year-old, Luke, whose life is turned upside down when two groups of migrant workers come to his family's cotton farm, inciting a dangerous chain of events that includes a murder, changing Luke's life forever.


Agree! The Doomsday Book is one of the finest written time travel books in my opinion. Willis captured some of it in her later series, Black Out & All Clear, but neither of those books mesmerized me as much as The Doomsday Book.


Author's Note: I assume that some day, this article will serve as an invaluable guide and warning for our time traveling ancestors-to-be (who will of course be unable to read books and learn these lessons for themselves, either because [a] all the books will have been burned, or [b] kids will have stopped reading books entirely, because grumble grumble, god damn kids, when I was your age, video games, blah blah, detriment to society, buncha hooligans, kids these days, no respect, etc). In the meantime, just enjoy it for all of its delightfully entertaining/convoluted/paradoxical pleasures.


Richard Hooker, MASH: 21 rejectionsAfter all the rejections, Hooker (aka Hornberger) revised the book with the help of W.C. Heinz. Soon after that, he sold it. Four years after its publication, it became one of the most popular television shows of all time.


At a time when Jim Crow laws still gripped the U.S. southern states and the civil rights movement was beginning to hit its stride, Harper Lee was quietly developing two books that told the tightly woven culture of racism in the Deep South.


The classic analogy for this, and the one that gives the paradox its name, is a time traveler journeying back in time and killing their own biological grandfather before they can sire children. This means the time traveler could never have come to exist and, as a consequence, can't travel back in time and thus can't kill their own grandfather. That means they then are born and can go back in time, hence the paradox.


This places certain events in order along the same CTC. These events would be effects and their causes, ensuring that causality never ran "backward." This self-consistency programmed into time travel would mean our time traveler couldn't kill their grandfather no matter how hard they tried. Some aspect of the universe would prevent it, the rifle would jam, the car would be diverted or some other intervention would save grandfather.


Imagine this is the case of a human time traveler journeying back in time to kill their grandfather. When the time traveler arrives back in 1963 from 2022, they leave world A and create a distinct world, World B, the world in which they arrive. World B would be different from World A, because in the established timeline of World A, a time machine carrying our time traveler never appeared in 1963.


The story begins in the future, some time around 2055 (or after). A time-travel safari company in the United States, Time Safari Inc., allows animal-hunters to travel back in time in a Time Machine and kill a long-extinct animal, such as a dinosaur. A man named Eckels turns up ready to undertake his safari.


If you were given the power to travel through time and Set Right What Once Went Wrong, what would you do to prevent the atrocities of the past? For many, the answer is obvious: kill Adolf Hitler. This would prevent World War II, The Holocaust, and their myriad side-effects... right?


Even worse, killing Hitler may prevent the assassin from existing in the first place, resulting in a Grandfather Paradox. In-story, this may cause any effects from just making nothing that the time traveler does change anything, to completely destroying the universe itself.


In short, it appears to be a cosmic law that something bad has to go down in the period between 1933 and 1945. Perhaps it's how World War II defined the 20th century; the technological advances, the political foundations, and the example of man's inhumanity to man at its absolute worst that changed whole societies' perception of evil and is ever present with us today. To imagine a world without it is to change everything. It may also be that Hitler, for all that he's considered the pinnacle of modern evil, is still a creature of his time and place; killing one man who did evil doesn't get rid of the circumstances and structure that put him in the position to do evil in the first place.


On the narrative side of things, consider the Anthropic Principle at work. Who would read a story in which someone tries to change history for the better, succeeds, and creates a stable utopian timeline that isn't infested with Clock Roaches? After they've killed Hitler, what would the author do with the rest of the book?


Any list about time travel books must begin with The Time Traveler's Wife, right? This bestselling novel tells the love story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who inadvertently travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Plot sound familiar? The book was adapted into a 2009 film starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, and a 2022 TV show starring Theo James and Rose Leslie.


Author Octavia Butler is a queen of science fiction, and Kindred is her bestselling novel about time travel. In it, she tells the story of Dana, a Black woman, who is celebrating her 26th birthday in 1976. Abruptly, she's transported back to Maryland, circa 1815, where she's on a plantation and has to save Rufus, the white son of the plantation owner. It's not just a time travel book, but one that expertly weaves in narratives of enslaved people and explores the Antebellum South.


The sequel to A Discovery of Witches, the plot of Shadow of Night picks up right where the story left off: With Matthew, a vampire, and Diana, a witch, traveling back in time to Elizabethan London to search for an enchanted manuscript. You really need to read the first book before reading Shadow of Night, but the series by Deborah Harkness is a swoony magical romance. 2ff7e9595c


1 view0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page