In “A Time for Mercy,” John Grisham returns to the characters and his fictional Ford County, Miss., that led to him becoming a bestselling author and household name.

Jake Brigance was the young struggling attorney in “A Time to Kill,” first released in the late 1980s. Jake was also featured in the more recent and less memorable Grisham book, “Sycamore Row.”

Though more than 30 years have passed since the publication of “Kill,” “Mercy” is set only five years later in the early 1990s.

Grisham offers the book’s set-up in the opening pages: An abusive, off-duty deputy comes home drunk. He beats his live-in girlfriend senseless while her teenage children cower locked in another room. The son finds his mother sprawled on the floor and believes she is dead. He finds the man drunk, unconscious, sprawled across a bed. The boy uses the deputy’s service revolver to shoot him in the head.

A judge assigns Jake, still struggling with his law offices in the small town of Clanton, Miss., to represent the boy who faces capital murder charges. Jake reluctantly takes the case. His neighbors immediately view Jake with scorn for representing a cop killer.

Grisham is back to the plotting and pacing of his early novels in “A Time for Mercy.” He creates a memorable story and Jake seems like the same guy from the “A Time to Kill.” I don’t even recall Jake from “Sycamore Row” and didn’t even recall reading the story until checking to see if “Mercy” was the only sequel to “Kill.” But “Sycamore” sits on my shelf, read, but with almost nothing save the title memorable about it.

Seven or eight years from now, “Mercy” should still be a story easy to recall, though not as easily as “Kill” at 30 years and counting.