The Guardians

The list of John Grisham's legal thrillers is long and this recent (2019) entry continues to demonstrate his ability to make legal thrillers totally engrossing. Guardian Ministries is a small (3) group of attorneys whose sole purpose is to get innocent people out of jail. When the book opens, they have managed to save 8 souls in 10 years and would do more if they had more money. Cullen Post--former public defender, and occasional Episcopal priest--does most of the traveling to investigate the cold cases in their efforts to vindicate the clients they take on. As the book opens, Post is sitting with a client, Duke Russell, on death row; his final meal has been delivered when the stay from the 11th Circuit Court arrives and halts the execution. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief; they have more time to exonerate their client. They have also recently taken on a new client, Quincy Miller, who was convicted 22 years ago of killing his former divorce attorney in the small town of Seabrook, Florida. The conviction is based on junk science--hair analysis and blood spatter--and a flashlight that conveniently disappears before the trial is the only piece of evidence that connected Miller to the crime. The goal of Guardian Ministries is not to find the real killers, but just to prove that their clients are innocent. However, their efforts have come to the attention of those who did actually kill the attorney and they're coming for Guardian in one way or another. The settings in the South are very atmospheric. Cullen Post is a very interesting character whose back story helps the reader understand why he would undertake such frustrating and demanding work. The book digs into the nasty issue of disproportionate rates of conviction, incarceration and death sentences for Black people. The case of Quincy Miller is based on the actual case of a Black man, Joe Bryan, who has been in prison for over 30 years.  And Guardian Ministries is base on an actual organization, Centurion Ministries, with the same goal of exonerating wrongly convicted people.

Maureen Corrigan offers a laudatory review in the Washington Post, and like Kirkus, hopes to see further stories about this set of characters. The New York Journal of Books says this book is "as gripping as it is shocking, with plenty of twists and turns you never see coming."