First published 2012
Gary Gilmore walks into a gas station in Utah and pulls the trigger. He kills a man in cold blood, then does it again the next day. The courts convict him and sentence him to death, but Gilmore wants something the system doesn't expect. He demands his execution while lawyers and activists fight to keep him alive. His girlfriend Nicole struggles with loving a killer. His family wrestles with shame and loyalty. Prison officials navigate the bureaucracy of death. Reporters swarm around the story of a man who became famous not for his crimes but for insisting on his punishment. Mailer follows each person caught in Gilmore's orbit as they move toward the firing squad. This Pulitzer Prize winner captures the stark landscape of Utah and the deeper terrain of American violence and isolation.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: moral-ambiguity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Utah, America
Period: 20th-century
Kindle Edition · Grand Central Publishing
Content warnings: murder, violence