The 25th Hour

'Acerbically captivating first novel...Benioff creates a pungent, funny urban tableau full of shrewd operators and unfulfilled desires. He gives this slim, engaging book a colorful range...Benioff delivers as full a surprise as the situation demands. But what makes his book enjoyable beyond his mere mechanics is the character study that develops as old friends get together and begin provoking one another' - NEW YORK TIMES

Acerbically captivating first novel . . . Benioff creates a pungent, funny urban tableau full of shrewd operators and unfulfilled desires - The New York Times

As unusual as it is well wrought: it resonates with a Whitmanesque sense of the city's possibilities and unsatisfied longings - The New Yorker

'Part thriller, part hip New York novella . . . first class debut' - GQ - GQ

'A stylish, beautifully written novel with a sharply drawn backdrop of New York . . . The book is filled with marvellous vignettes. The mixture of tenderness and jealousy among the friends, their fear and resentment remain in the memory' - Susanna Yager, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

David Benioff's headlong suspense novel is a deceptively simple chronicle of [Monty's] final day of freedom . . . Working in a novelistic form of "real time", Benioff shows a knack for critiquing his genre while revitalising its cliches . . . Instead of yielding mere irony, the author, in his first novel, achieves both pathos and excitement - Entertainment Weekly

Brilliantly conceived, this gripping crime drama boasts dead-on dialogue, chiaroscuro portraits of New York's social strata and an inescapable crescendo of tension. Monty's solution to his agonising dilemmas will shock even hardened suspense lovers - Publishers Weekly

original and tightly written - Liverpool Echo - Liverpool Echo