A small-town defense attorney turned best-selling author of pulp suspense novels involving the legal profession, John Grisham published his first book, "A Time to Kill", in 1989 after it was rejected by 25 publishers. The film version, which he co-produced, was released in the summer of 1996. Directed by Joel Schumacher, it featured Samuel L Jackson, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey and centered on the case of a black man accused of murdering the men who raped and killed his young daughter.A son of the South, Grisham practiced law in Mississippi for nearly ten years, handling mostly
