by Stephen King
Part of The Green Mile
First published 1996
Paul Edgecombe runs the death row block at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in 1932. The guards call it the Green Mile, named for the stretch of faded linoleum between the cells and the electric chair. When John Coffey arrives, Paul expects another hard case. Coffey is enormous, soft-spoken, and convicted of murdering two young sisters whose deaths no one has been able to make sense of, not the jury, not the warden, and not even Coffey himself. Paul watches this man who cries in the night and flinches at the dark, and something does not add up. The first installment of King's serialized novel sets the machinery in motion slowly and deliberately. It plants John Coffey at the center of a story about guilt, evidence, and the distance between what a man looks like and what he is. Paul is not yet sure what he is witnessing. The reader is not either. That uncertainty is the engine.
Genres: drama, classic-literature, american-fiction, crime, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, haunting, introspective, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: innocent-accused, slow-burn-mystery, unreliable-justice
Setting: Cold Mountain Penitentiary, The Green Mile
Period: 1932, 1930s
92 pages · Paperback · Bt Bound
Content warnings: death, murder, violence