Book Review: The Confession by John Grisham

I finished John Grisham’s The Confession in four straight days, and the first thing I did afterward was put up an Instagram story (the one that disappears after twenty-four hours) with the cover and the line: Reading this felt like an emotional gut punch.

It wasn’t an impulsive reaction. I simply had to say something right away, because I found the story morally and ethically charged on the one hand, and riveting and unsettling on the other. Perhaps because it was uncomfortably close to reality.

The Confession is the heartbreaking story of Donté Drumm, a young local Black football player from the small East Texas town of Sloan, who is wrongfully convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of Nicole Yarber, a popular high school White cheerleader—and sent to death row.

Following a malicious witness testimony, Drew Kerber, a crooked detective with the Sloan Police Department, picks up Donté and, after a gruelling and intimidating interrogation filled with lies, extracts a false confession from him.

There is no evidence against Donté and the case is riddled with holes. Despite the fact that he later recants his forced confession and that the girl’s body is never found, Donté is tried before an all-White jury and convicted of a crime he did not commit.

But that’s not where Grisham’s novel begins. It actually starts nine years after Donté’s incarceration, when Travis Boyette—a serial rapist and registered sex offender out on parole in another case—is struck by a rare moment of conscience and confesses to the crime before Keith Schroeder, a Lutheran minister living hundreds of miles away in Topeka, Kansas. Travis wants to clear Donté’s name—‘He didn’t do anything wrong’—because he is dying of an inoperable brain tumour and wants to do one good thing before he takes his last breath.

With less than twenty-four hours to go before the execution, Keith, much against the advice of his wife and a lawyer friend, drives Travis all the way to Sloan in the dead of night to meet Donté’s lawyer, Robbie Flak, in a last-ditch effort to save his life.

Can a guilty man, especially a depraved, loathsome one at that, convince the police, judges, district attorneys, the media, politicians and a state governor—many of them indirectly complicit—that they’re about to execute an innocent man?

The Confession goes well beyond crime and punishment. It explores the profound impact of a wrongful conviction on families, society, and the criminal justice system in Texas, across America, and beyond. The story feels hauntingly close to real-life cases where those serving life sentences, awaiting execution, or perhaps already executed were later found innocent.

As always, Grisham’s writing is gripping, and the story unfolds at a brisk pace, overlooking no detail—whether of characters, events or the judicial process. I thought some of the lengthy descriptions and backstories could have been left out, but that’s the author’s prerogative, not to mention his trademark style. But, in doing so, Grisham explores sensitive issues such as the fairness—or the lack thereof—of the justice system, bigotry and racial bias, social prejudices and, above all, the death penalty.

The two main characters—Donté’s lawyer Robbie Flak (and his legal team) and minister Keith Schroeder—handle the crisis with a sense of urgency and compassion. Travis Boyette’s attempt at redemption isn’t quite convincing. I expected his character to be more chilling than it is, especially when he repeatedly tells Keith his wife is cute and that they must be having fun together.

In the end, The Confession is more than a legal thriller; it makes a strong case for empathy in law enforcement, due legal processes and criminal justice reforms. To err may be human, but to be fallible in matters of the death penalty is unthinkable. And it made me think, as we all do from time to time: Why do bad things happen to good people? Because there are bad people in this world.