In Patterson’s defense, once Malcolm’s trial finally begins, the novel picks up, and the gambits and maneuvers of the lawyers and judge generate a good amount of suspense. But that doesn’t happen until two-thirds of the way through the book, and what comes before is a soap-operatic slog laden with tendentious speeches about American race relations.
Maybe an extremely basic legal thriller by an established, bestselling white author is a good way to introduce structural racism to a white audience, if there’s one out there that hasn’t encountered the concept before. Maybe.a good novel—by which I mean a novel I can ever imagine enjoying. This isn’t to say thatcouldn’t sell. I find the characters in John Grisham’s novels boringly generic as well, and Grisham reliably moves millions of books.