Reviews of The Innocent Man
“Grisham expertly dissects each judicial and constitutional outrage with
cool precision. In telling this story, the king of the legal thriller has
put a human face on capital punishment and gambled with his audience. Book
clubs expecting a breezy, true-crime read will find a darker product, a
well-crafted, meticulous study of a broken system. Grisham asks a nagging
question: If wrongful convictions happen all the time, how do we know the
poison is flowing into the real killer's arm?
– The Seattle Times
“The Innocent Man is a useful companion to Ultimate Punishment (2003),
the argument against the death penalty by that other lawyer who writes
skillful fiction, Scott Turow. Like Turow, Grisham realizes that the most
powerful argument against the death penalty is that it kills the innocent as
well as the guilty, a case that he makes simply by telling Williamson and
Fritz's story. . . his reasoning is sound and his passion is contagious.”
– The Washington Post
“An important book . . . maybe with Grisham shouting out the causes and
frequency of wrongful convictions, meaningful reform will occur in every
jurisdiction, rather than in only a few.”
– St. Louis Post-Dispatch