Books › True Crime
True Crime
The Novel
First published 1995 · 800 pages
A gritty, ticking-clock race against the executioner that trades on high anxiety and the desperate redemption of a deeply flawed man.
What it feels like
Reading this thriller feels like watching a fuse burn down in real time. The atmosphere is soaked in dread and claustrophobia, driven by a ticking clock that makes every page turn feel frantic and necessary. You are trapped in the perspective of a deeply unlikable, self-destructive protagonist, yet the sheer momentum of his desperate search for the truth forces you to root for his redemption. The prose is crisp, taut, and stripped of excess, delivering a hardboiled edge that perfectly matches the cynical world it inhabits. It is an anxious, white-knuckle experience designed for readers who crave high-stakes suspense, gritty journalistic procedurals, and the agonizing tension of a life hanging in the balance as the final seconds tick away.
- Mood
- anxious
- claustrophobic
- dread-soaked
- tense
- Tone
- cynical
- urgent
- gritty
- hardboiled
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- race against time · redemption of the flawed · systemic failure · the weight of mortality · journalistic obsession
- The writing
- Crisp, taut, and relentlessly forward-moving, with a hardboiled edge that mirrors its protagonist's world-weary cynicism.
- The arc
- Moves from cynical detachment and personal ruin into a state of desperate, white-knuckle urgency as the stakes become agonizingly real.
- Who it's for
- Fans of ticking-clock thrillers who enjoy riding shotgun with deeply flawed, self-destructive protagonists seeking a final shot at redemption.
Content notes
- capital punishment
- murder of a pregnant woman
- alcoholism
- infidelity
- graphic violence
About the book
True Crime is an edge-of-the-seat suspense novel that graphically portrays the final moments leading up to a condemned killer's appointment with the executioner. The plot is familiar but convincing: An inmate, Frank Beachum, denies any involvement in the murder of a young pregnant woman. His only chance for survival lies in the hands of a reporter, Steven Everett. From the very first page, however, veteran suspense writer Andrew Klavan does everything possible to make this journalist unlikable--he drinks too much, he's committed adultery. In fact, the incarcerated Beachum, who stands accused of a hideous crime, comes across as a much more decent person than Everett. Foes of capital punishment will find in True Crime another buttress to the oft-expressed argument that state-sanctioned murder is not always just, that some police investigations are sloppy even when they're not politically tinged or racially motivated, and that exonerating evidence is often overlooked. Here such evidence is so glaringly overlooked that it's possible for a somewhat drunken reporter with plenty of other things on his mind (a wife who's about to leave him and a boss who's just discovered that Everett is cuckolding him) to spot the inconsistencies. He follows a hunch, discovers the identity of the real killer, and tries to clear Beachum's name as the minutes tick away. The relentless pace and Klavan's crisp, taut writing make the suspension of disbelief possible, and no doubt Clint Eastwood, who stars in the movie version, will make Steven Everett a more likely and likable hero. -- Jane Adams
Description from Open Library.
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