A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

 A Time for Mercy brings back the lawyer from Grisham's very first book--A Time to Kill. Jake Brigance is still living in Clanton, Mississippi with his wife Carla and daughter Hanna. And he's still struggling to make his law practice profitable--when a judge drops a case in his lap that he wants to toss back immediately. A young teenage boy named Drew has been arrested for killing his mother's boyfriend, a cop on the Clanton police force. Jake can see that this case is going to run up a lot of uncompensated hours and put him in a very unpopular position with many of the townsfolk because Stuart, the dead cop, was popular. But then Jake discovers that Stuart had a very dark side that his girlfriend and her kids were direct witnesses to and victims of. Which is the only thing that Jake hopes will keep Drew out of the gas chamber.

It's a thought-provoking page turner.