John Grisham. A Time to Kill

Language: American English
Publisher: Island Books
City: New York
Publication date: 1992
Pages: 515

Brief description:
The novel begins when two white men, Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard, abduct and rape a ten-year old black girl named Tonya Hailey. They throw her off a bridge, thinking the fall will kill her, but Tonya survives. Sheriff Ozzie Walls, the first and only black sheriff in Ford County, arrests the two men after they are overheard in a bar bragging about the crime. Days later, as the alleged rapists are leaving a courtroom, Carl Lee Hailey, Tonya’s father, bursts from a janitor’s closet and kills the men with an illegally obtained M-16 rifle.