Richard Laymon Same Vein
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RATING:  |
Date of Release: June
2003
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Publisher: Hodder Headline |
Review Source:  |
The 25th Hour by David Benioff
The 25th hour is outstanding. It is a trim and haunting account of what goes on
in the head of a man who realizes all too well that he’s thrown his life
away and that nothing will ever be the same. The story is about the last day of
freedom for Montgomery “Monty” Brogan, a pretty-boy Irish-Catholic New
Yorker in his late 20s who is about to spend seven years in a federal penitentiary
for dealing drugs. In his last 24 hours of freedom Monty must say goodbye to his
two oldest friends, Wall Street whiz kid Frank Slattery, and high school English
teacher Jakob Elinsky, as well as his longtime live-in girlfriend Naturelle, his
bar owner father, his loyal pit bull Doyle, and the post-Soviet mobsters he worked
for.
This last day is effectively a deathbed for Monty, as he makes his peace with
all the people he’ll leave behind, knowing that he’ll be a totally
different person after seven years of hard time. But it’s also about those
left behind, and their own struggle to come to terms with the fact that someone
close to them is gone, and that to a certain extent they are complicit in his
downfall. These are fully realized characters, as Slattery struggles to control
himself in a high-stakes, high- pressure job, Jakob struggles to avoid the allure
of his student Mary, Naturelle must start planning on moving back to her mother’s
home, and Monty’s widowed father must say goodbye to his only child. Despite
the lack of suspense, the book builds steadily, ending with a powerful and uncompromising
punch.
A great debut.
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