John Grisham takes you back to where it all began. One of the most popular novels of our time, A Time to Kill established John Grisham as the master of the legal thriller. Now we return to Ford County as Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial that exposes a tortured history of racial tension.

 

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County’s most notorious citizens, just three years earlier. The second will raises many more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?


本世紀最傑出的小說《殺戮時刻》成就約翰葛斯漢法律類驚悚書籍的大師地位，這次他重回《殺戮時刻》故事的原點，現在就讓我們回到福特郡，這次律師傑克又將被捲入一場極具爭議性的官司，揭露一段由種族衝突所引起的悲慘憾事。

富翁希斯賀伯因罹癌即將過世，可是他不相信任何人；因此，於門前梧桐樹上吊自盡前，他留下一封親筆遺囑。然而，這個舉動卻引起他的兒女、黑人女傭和傑克之間的衝突，這場衝突就像三年前那宗戲劇性的兇殺案官司般引人注目，傑克更因為那場官司成了福特郡最惡名昭彰的惡人。這封修改過的遺囑不但沒有解釋變更原因，反而引起更多問號。究竟為何希斯要將大部份的財產留給女傭呢？是化療和止痛藥使他喪失判斷能力嗎？又和這片過去人稱「梧桐樹街」的地方有何關聯呢？