Candlemoth [Paperback]

Roger John Ellory's Candlemoth makes a decent but not entirely successful stab at being several novels. It is a protest against the death penalty and about inhuman treatment of prisoners that dramatises both issues by showing us Daniel, who has been railroaded to the electric chair over the brutal murder of his best friend. Inevitably though, Daniel is so passive and battered by his situation that the book can show us little except his pain. Offstage, it is a thriller about the process whereby he was framed and might be acquitted, but Ellory de-emphasises this aspect of the plot in favour of Daniel's suffering.

Much of the book is taken up in a memoir of the 60s, when Daniel and his best friend Nathan had a relationship that crossed racial boundaries in a south torn by conflict and when they went on the run to avoid being drafted into an unjust war. The book is vivid in its sense of the time, but again there is a sense of Daniel as someone who never really lives his own life--even in love and friendship he is the person to whom emotions and events happen. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Daniel and Nathan were six years old when they first met and became best friends. Thirty years later Dan is convicted of Nathan's murder . . .

Daniel Ford has thirty-six days to live. Accused of the horrific murder of his best friend Nathan twelve years before, he has exhausted all appeals and now faces the long walk to the electric chair. All he can do is make peace with his God. Father John Rousseau is the man to whom the last month of Daniel's life has been entrusted. All the two men have left to do is rake over the last ashes of Ford's existence. So he begins to tell his story. Daniel's story takes him from his first meeting with Nathan, aged six, on the shores of a lake in 1952, through first loves, Vietnam, the death of Kennedy and finally their flight from the draft which ends in Nathan's brutal murder. But meanwhile the clock is ticking and the days are running out . . .

CANDLEMOTH is a book that grabbed me from the off. Roger writes with such warmth and power that you're gripped from that amazing first line ('Five times I've been betrayed - twice by women, once by a better friend than any man might wish for, and lastly by a nation...'). It's one of those novels that doesn't need artificial tricks to keep you reading: you like Daniel and Nathan so much and the atmosphere of 50s America is so strong that you can't put it down. It's also a brilliant coming-of-age novel and a tragic love story... and of course, as the days tick away you just have to know his fate (and whether he did or didn't do it...) We bought the book with little fanfare, but it's become one of the most popular here and has gone on to sell throughout Europe. Roger is a special talent and we will be hearing a lot more about him as time goes on... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

R.J. Ellory is the author of nine novels including the bestselling A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS, which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and was shortlisted for the BARRY AWARD, the 813 TROPHY, the QUEBEC BOOKSELLERS' PRIZE and was winner of the NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR CRIME FICTION PRIZE. His work has been translated into 23 languages. www.rjellory.com.