The 25th Hour [Paperback]

'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 )

'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 )

'The 25th Hour is a wonderfully written first novel . . .[a] brilliant and disturbing story' (Otto Penzler - amazon.com )

'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 )

'The most impressive novel since Donna Tart's THE SECRET HISTORY . . . a masterly crafted variation on the conventional crime and punishment novel' CITY LIFE (Philip Hamer at CITY LIFE )

'A marvellous novel . . . the result is a beautifully written, well-paced novel - with a cracking twist in its tail.' - OBSERVER (Observer )

'Acerbically captivating first novel...Benioff creates a pungent, funny urban tableau full of shrewd operators and unfulfilled desires'

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

'Much acclaimed debut set on New York's mean streets.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Monty Brogan starts a seven-year prison sentence for dealing drugs tomorrow. Tonight is his last night of freedom. His father wants him to run. His drug-lord boss, Uncle Blue, wants to know if he squealed. His girlfriend isn't sure what she wants, and his two best friends know one thing for sure; after he goes in, he will never be the same.

This is a novel that stays with you a long time after reading it; it's not quite a crime novel, though there's crime in it, it's not quite a thriller, though aspects of it are certainly thrilling. It's atmospheric, thought-provoking, with wonderfully realised characters that fill Monty Brogan's life as he walks through the streets of snowy Manhattan in the last 24 hours before he goes to prison. It's a beautifully written yet very simple novel, and David Benioff is a writer to watch.

In the spring of 1997 I was living in Moose, Wyoming, working as a deejay at the local radio station. My shift was from midnight to six. Between songs I'd announce local news: weather forecasts, lost dogs, elk migration alerts. The bakers at the supermarket would call in to request Blue Öyster Cult at 5:30 every morning. At 5:45 the dawn shift deejay would arrive, generally crying because of some fight she'd had with her boyfriend. At 6:05 I'd be sitting in Le Jay's Sportsmen's Café, eating chicken fried steak, wondering how a city boy from the Yorkville section of Manhattan had wound up in a place like this.
Afternoons were for writing, supposedly, but after a few hours staring at the computer screen I usually borrowed my neighbor's dog, Maisie, for long walks along the Snake River. Everything I wrote seemed bloodless and stunted. All my characters were in search of a story. God's Country was killing me. I needed pollution.
In the middle of April I flew home to New York to stay with my parents for a week. I figured I'd drink with old friends, wander around my old neighborhood, maybe even do some of the tourist stuff I'd never bothered with before. The Statue of Liberty!
I've still never been to the Statue of Liberty. On the third night of my homecoming, I left the dinner table, limped into my old bedroom and curled up in a fetal position on my bed. Something was wrong. My stomach hurt so much I thought I was poisoned, and I tried to remember if I had said anything to offend my mother. I crawled into the bathroom and lay on the tiled floor.
Twelve hours later it occurred to me that I could go to a hospital, where trained men and women are ready to help the afflicted. You'd think that a college-educated fellow like myself might have thought of hospitals earlier, and their wonderful practice of staying open all night, but I was too absorbed counting the tiles in the bathroom.
At the hospital, the ultrasound technician determined that my appendix was ready to blow. A few hours later I was in the surgery recovery room, staring groggily at a male nurse who kept reminding me to breathe.
According to the surgeon, my appendix had died and turned gangrenous. The gangrene had spread into my colon. Basically, I was rotten on the inside.
I don't like typing the word "gangrene". I don't like it when I come across it in histories of the Civil War, I don't like the connotation of whiskey bottles and handsaws, and I especially don't like it in reference to my own body.
The gangrene returned my dislike by laying me low for two months. I lost thirty pounds. I was told that catheter insertion did not hurt, and I learned that catheter insertion does hurt, and anyone who says otherwise is a lying bastard and presumably penisless.
The doctors told me to walk as much as possible, so I walked up and down the hospital corridors, pulling my I.V. unit along with me. At the end of the hall, a tall picture window looked out over Fifth Avenue and Central Park. I'd stare down at the pedestrians walking their dogs, jogging toward the Reservoir, dodging yellow cabs, hurrying to their next appointment. New Yorkers are always hurrying to their next appointment. Even the shopping-cart ladies seem pressed for time, arguing with whatever voices occupy their minds.
I looked down at the City and wanted it. The noise, the stink, the crowding, the aggression, the sexuality, the heat. Everything, all of it, I wanted.
When I finally got my strength back I began taking long walks. My parents no longer lived in Yorkville, so I hiked up there, the old stomping grounds. Carl Schurz Park, where Fat Allie, the neighborhood bully, had threatened to "punch a hole right through" me. 86th and East End, where I got my first French kiss from a girl who lived down the block. The East River esplanade, where I saw my first dead body.
How hard it would be, I thought, if someone took me from my home and wouldn't let me return. I stood on the esplanade and stared out over the river, and the story I'd been searching for came to me. The story of a young man, Monty Brogan, and his last day of freedom before serving a seven-year prison sentence. The story of a city boy about to be exiled from his city, and the choices he makes as time runs out.
The gangrene got my appendix and a piece of my colon; I got The 25th Hour. Seems fair to me.

December, 2001

David Benioff has published articles and stories in GQ, Seventeen and Zoetrope, as well as in the anthologies The Ex-Files and Best New American Voices 2000. Born and raised in New York City, he now lives in Los Angeles. This is his first novel.

By now the dog had slumped back to the pavement, still struggling to keep his head up, to keep his glazing eyes focused on the two men.
‘Look at him,' said Monty. ‘We wait much longer, he'll be dead.'
‘One minute ago you want to shoot him.'
‘That was a mercy thing. But he's not ready to go yet.'
‘Yes? He told you this? You know when he is ready to go?'
Monty carefully circled behind the dog, holding the army blanket as a matador holds his cape. ‘It's like a baby, they hate getting shots from the doctor. They're screaming and crying as soon as they see the needle. But in the long run, it's good for them. Here, distract him.'
Kostya shook his head with the air of one who had long suffered his friend's lunacies, then kicked a soda can. The dog's eyes pivoted to follow the movement. Monty hurled the blanket over the dog and sprang forward, wrapping his arms around the dog's midsection. The dog growled and wrestled with the wool, sinking his teeth into the fabric and shaking it violently, trying to break the blanket's neck. Monty managed to stand, struggling to maintain his bear hug, but the dog, slick with blood, slithered madly in his grasp like a monstrous newborn. Monty lurched toward the Corvette as the pit bull released the blanket and turned his head, snapping viciously, his jaws inches from Monty's throat. He clawed at Monty's arms until Monty hurled him into the trunk, the dog still biting as he fell into the hollow of the spare tire, trying unsteadily to regain his footing as the lid slammed shut.
Monty picked up the army blanket and returned to the driver's seat. Kostya stared at the sky for a moment and then joined his friend in the Corvette. The entire encounter had lasted five minutes.
‘What goes on in your little head?' asked Kostya, after Monty had tossed the blanket into the well behind his seat and started the car. ‘That was very stupid thing you did. Most stupid thing you ever did. No, I take that back. Lydia Eumanian was most stupid thing you ever did.'
‘I got him, didn't I?' said Monty, grinning. ‘A little of the tricks, a little of the quicks, boom! Nabbed.' He checked his mirrors and pulled onto the highway, heading uptown again.
‘Yes. The quicks. Meanwhile, you are bleeding. You get bit.'
‘No, that's the dog's blood.'
Kostya raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes? Because you have hole in your neck and blood is coming out.'
Monty lifted his hand to his neck, felt the warm dribble of blood. ‘Just a scratch.'

‘A scratch, oh. Meanwhile, you bleed to death. And you need rabies shot.'
‘They'll stitch it up at the vet's.' Behind them the dog thrashed around in the trunk, his bellows muted by the traffic.
‘What? The vet? You bleed all over car, you die, your father yells at me. Oh, boo-hoo, boo-hoo, you let Monty die. No, please. Go to Seventh Avenue, there is Saint Something, a real hospital.'
‘We're going to the vet.' The blood ran down Monty's arm, soaking his shirtsleeve, puddling at the elbow.
‘Rule number one,' said Kostya, ‘don't grab halfdead pit bulls. We have people waiting for us, people with money, and you play cowboy – no, dogboy – in middle of highway. You're bad luck; you put bad luck on me. Always everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. Doyle's Law. It is not just you and me when we go out, no, no, it is Monty, Kostya, and Mister Doyle of Doyle's Law.'
‘Doyle? You mean Murphy.'
‘Who's Murphy?'
‘Who's Doyle? Murphy's Law,' said Monty. ‘Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.'
‘Yes,' said Kostya. ‘Him.'
From that day on the dog was Doyle.