Review: The Last Mile

The Last Mile by David Baldacci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recently, my dad told me about a true-crime book by John Grisham he'd recently started reading, about a black man in Texas (I think) who'd been falsely accused of killing a white girl and found guilty. In between all his descriptions of the case and how the guy eventually got on track to getting justice, I kept interjecting increasingly salty, increasingly foul-mouthed comments to the effect of "because it's Texas, and there's a legacy of racism down there."

So when I told him what this book was about, he demanded that I get him into the Amos Decker series right away.

Like Sandford's Extreme Prey, this latest from Baldacci gets pretty topical as it explores the root of the problems currently facing America - bigotry from the sort of people who hide behind their Bibles and spew vile hatred in the name of Jesus, all to ensure that this country doesn't become the beacon of hope and bastion of tolerance it ought to be. Going into an all-important election, we can't afford to lose our way, lose all the progress we've made in the last fifty years, especially.

This country cannot become the sort of place where the events of this book can happen, and happen unpunished.

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