(2005) Not very good. Only finished about 1/2 of this. Could not get into a story about a convicted murderer that supposedly did a very vile crime and the long, boring process of trying to get him off of death row.

First edition very fine

Though I found the story to be very good. I had a hard time finishing this book. Saving this man from being executed and all that he went thru in his life was intereting, but there was too much legal mumbo jumbo in this book. I felt like the majority of this book was about the legal process, not the man's story. Tho I will leave this book on my shelf, I'm not sure I will read it again. ( )

5041. Conviction A Novel, by Richard North Patterson (read 7 Jul 2013) This is the fifth book by this author I have read. It tells of the effort by a skilled lawyer to try to prevent the execution of a defendant convicted of the murder (along with his brother) of a nine-year-old girl who died during a sex crime. Both brothers were represented by the same lawyer who did an unbelievably bad job defending . The account takes up the effort by a new lawyer after 15 years to save the mentally deficient brother. It is a tense and emotionally draining story, illustrating the impetus involved in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act--which is a real law passed by Congress and designed to make it harder to overturn a death sentence, and which leads the prosecution to argue that innocence makes no difference! ( )

I'm so happy to discover another legal writer who has so much work for me to read! I listened to the audio version and the story is gripping as you follow the enormous efforts to provide a defense for a convicted man to prevent his death. It was exhausting to comprehend the layers and layers of complexity to get through a very tangled puzzle of law, holding out hope, again and again. ( )