The Chamber: A Novel
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A dark and thoughtful tale pulsing with moral uncertainties . . . Grisham is at his best.”—People
In Chicago’s top law firm, a young lawyer stands on the brink of a brilliant career. Now twenty-six-year-old Adam Hall is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. Cayhall has run out of chances—except for one: a determined lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.
While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather, and while 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.
In Chicago’s top law firm, a young lawyer stands on the brink of a brilliant career. Now twenty-six-year-old Adam Hall is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. Cayhall has run out of chances—except for one: a determined lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.
While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather, and while 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.
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Community Reviews
Grisham despises the death penalty, and this exceedingly overwritten, maudlin novel makes that argument, ad nauseum, through one of the main characters, Adam Hall, who discovers his grandfather is none other than Sam Cayhall, a former Ku Klux Klan member on death row for the murders of two children who were on site when a bomb he placed went off. A very young and inexperienced lawyer, Adam implausibly becomes Sam's attorney, trying to get his execution stayed or reversed. Sam had fired the prestigious law firm that had represented him for many years, but Adam got himself hired there for the express purpose of trying to save the grandfather he never knew--but does know he was credibly accused of several lynchings and bombings targeting Jews and Blacks.
Ostensibly, this is about Adam's need to understand the terrible family history, one that ruined his own father's life, and a need to try to establish a relationship with his grandfather. But it just never is believable to me that a young man so committed to fairness, so against bigotry, can muster so much care about a crotchety and unrepetent bigot. As time begins to run out for Sam, he (finally) begins to express remorse, but by then, even he realizes that perhaps death is a worthy punishment.
The tedious details about all the legal gambits played to get Sam's date with the gas chamber repealed or "stayed" only makes it more understandable why so many courts view these 11th-hour "gangplank" lawsuits with cynicism and deny them. And Grisham, as he has done in other novels, has the likable characters all profess their revulsion for the death penalty, claiming the simplistic claim that killing is killing, no matter who does it. There is no distinction between cold-blooded and violent murder and a killing as a means of appropriate punishment for heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the characters who support it are almost cartoonishly drawn.
Grisham really laid on thick sentimentality toward the end, making Sam seem nearly heroic. Sorry, some characters just don't deserve it, and readers deserve to have their time better respected by writers. I started skimming the story about three-quarters of the way through.
Ostensibly, this is about Adam's need to understand the terrible family history, one that ruined his own father's life, and a need to try to establish a relationship with his grandfather. But it just never is believable to me that a young man so committed to fairness, so against bigotry, can muster so much care about a crotchety and unrepetent bigot. As time begins to run out for Sam, he (finally) begins to express remorse, but by then, even he realizes that perhaps death is a worthy punishment.
The tedious details about all the legal gambits played to get Sam's date with the gas chamber repealed or "stayed" only makes it more understandable why so many courts view these 11th-hour "gangplank" lawsuits with cynicism and deny them. And Grisham, as he has done in other novels, has the likable characters all profess their revulsion for the death penalty, claiming the simplistic claim that killing is killing, no matter who does it. There is no distinction between cold-blooded and violent murder and a killing as a means of appropriate punishment for heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the characters who support it are almost cartoonishly drawn.
Grisham really laid on thick sentimentality toward the end, making Sam seem nearly heroic. Sorry, some characters just don't deserve it, and readers deserve to have their time better respected by writers. I started skimming the story about three-quarters of the way through.
Such an interesting concept. I love under-water or outer-space mysteries. This one did not disappoint. A group of underwater divers/welders are in a chamber with limited connection to the outside world, one by one they start dying. Lots of action and high anxiety wondering what was going on. Kinda gave me T.J Newman writing style (not as action packed but very descriptive). Author left the ending to your imagination. This is a book that I will be selective to who I recommend it to. I loved it but I can see how others may think it’s slow and wouldn’t like it.
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