A Time to Kill (1989), John Grisham’s debut novel, became a bestseller and was adapted into a film and a stage production. Grisham worked as a lawyer for 10 years before becoming a novelist, and he based A Time to Kill on some of his prior work. The novel takes place in Clanton, Ford County, a fictional town and county in rural north Mississippi. Grisham uses this fictional setting in six other books, including A Time for Mercy. Some characters appear in both novels, including Jake Brigance, Sheriff Ozzie Walls, Lucien Wilbanks, Harry Rex Vonner, and Judge Omar Noose.

In A Time to Kill, Jake Brigance, an ambitious small-town lawyer, defends Carl Lee Hailey, who is accused of killing the two men who abduct, rape, and attempt to kill his 10-year-old daughter, Tonya. Sheriff Ozzie Walls arrests the two men when they brag about their misdeeds in a bar; Hailey then shoots both men with an M-16 as they leave the courtroom. Jake agrees to defend Hailey and works with Lucien Wilbanks and Harry Rex Vonner to build a case that will get Hailey acquitted. Because of Mississippi’s racial tension during the 1980s, Jake and his family immediately receive threatening phone calls.