The Chamber

Pros

• Will Dean's novels are great for this. Check out The Last One or The Chamber
• I think this book is firmly against the death penalty with no ambiguity.
• The book is openly anti death penalty, and it says multiple times that Sam killing people was wrong and that the state killing him is equally wrong.
• ignoring the premise, the book is an amazing character study and is a wonderful exploration of generational trauma, written a good generation before the phrase "generational trauma" became popularized!
• "The Chamber" is a great read, I thoroughly recommend it, but I called the book a slog for a reason, as each page and each chapter lets you know how close Sam is to execution, and how hopeless his chances are to change this!

Cons

• the book itself assumes the default that "of course you need the death penalty for very bad people," it just argues that nothing was gained by killing Sam! ... the book itself is tonally for the Death Penalty, many characters support the...
• I started reading this today, but gave up after 4 chapters. I just wasn’t onboard with the story of trying to get Sam off death row. Most of Grisham’s other stories I’ve enjoyed usually have something virtuous to save. I didn’t see the p...
• Grisham confirms over and over and over what a horrible racist person Sam is, but after discovering each racist act... Grisham still seems to argue that Cayhall doesn't deserve to "be killed like a dog"! despite him being involved in num...
• You can predict the "plot" from the (overly long) setup, and aside from a comic book "super villain super spy bomber" randomly added into this mostly realistic narrative, the entire book could happen in real life... I called the book a s...
• Grisham portrays Sam Cayhall as a racist who planted bombs, killed two innocent kids on accident, committed horribly racist acts to his black neighbors, emotionally scarred his children, and all around is a horrible Horrible HORRIBLE per...