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Overview
In the heat of the city, a man is out of time: speeding in a beat-up Ford Tempo, blasting easy-listening music. Reporter Steve Everett drinks too much, makes love to his boss's wife, and has just stumbled upon a shocking truth: a convicted killer is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit.
In the cold confines of Death Row, Frank Beachum is also out of time. Ready to say good-bye to the wife and child he loves and hello to the God he still believes in, Beachum knows he did not kill a convenience store clerk six years ago. But in a few hours—if Steve Everett can't find the evidence to stop it—a needle is going to pierce Frank Beachum's skin.
The killing machine is primed. The executioner is waiting. And so is the priest. Now the clock is ticking down and the race is on—between the reporter and his demons, between the system and its lethal flaws, between the last innocent man and society's ultimate crime . . . .
Synopsis
In the heat of the city, a man is out of time: speeding in a beat-up Ford Tempo, blasting easy-listening music. Reporter Steve Everett drinks too much, makes love to his boss's wife, and has just stumbled upon a shocking truth: a convicted killer is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit.
In the cold confines of Death Row, Frank Beachum is also out of time. Ready to say good-bye to the wife and child he loves and hello to the God he still believes in, Beachum knows he did not kill a convenience store clerk six years ago. But in a few hours—if Steve Everett can't find the evidence to stop it—a needle is going to pierce Frank Beachum's skin.
The killing machine is primed. The executioner is waiting. And so is the priest. Now the clock is ticking down and the race is on—between the reporter and his demons, between the system and its lethal flaws, between the last innocent man and society's ultimate crime . . . .
Publishers Weekly
Though this is only Klavan's fourth novel under his own name (he received two Edgar Awards for pseudonymous mysteries), his stylistic range and thoroughly compelling plots have earned him a loyal readership-an audience that should be broadened with this gripping tale. Here Klavan puts an intensely human, often intriguingly quirky face on a familiar plot device: the race to save a convicted killer on death row. When a St. Louis News staffer crashes her car hours before her scheduled interview with Frank Beachum (the interview itself to take place just eight hours before Beachum's execution), reporter Steve Everett is handed the assignment. Everett, 35 (and possessing ``wicked, sharply angled brows and a wicked, sharply angled smile''), is already under pressure: though married, he has been shtupping the boss's wife, which creates no little tension at work and at home. Furthermore, he comes to believe that Beachum is innocent, and both personal ethics and career opportunism propel him to pursue his theory. To this end, Klavan gives us the photo finish to end all photo finishes: readers may be gasping for breath by the time Beachum's fate is decided. Even before that, however, the author's vivid characterizations and dramatic prose-packed with tension, black humor and wry observations on the human condition-command attention. Alternating chapters (their style changing as deftly as their settings) present a harrowing portrait of a killer's final hours along with perceptively observed personal and professional crises of an oddly likable schlemiel. 250,000 first printing; major ad/promo; film rights to 20th Century-Fox; simultaneous Random House audio. (June)
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
When a rookie journalist is critically injured in an accident, hard-drinking soon-to-be-fired reporter Steve Everett must stop philandering with his boss's wife long enough to fill in on an assignment: Visit death-row inmate Frank Beachum on the day of his execution and write a simple human-interest story on the final hours of a condemned man. But in a routine background check, Everett stumbles across what everyone else has missed: proof the convicted man is innocent. He has 12 hours to prove it. Klavan writes beautifully and profoundly of Beachum's torment and doubts in those dwindling hours, and the depictions of Everett's efforts -- in spite of his apparent goal of self-destruction -- are remarkable. Brilliant.—Rick Koster