Product Description

Monty starts a seven-year prison sentence for dealing drugs and tonight is his last night of freedom. His father wants him to run. His drug-lord boss wants to know if he squealed. His girlfriend isn't sure what she wants but his two friends know that if he goes in, he will never be the same.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296307 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, January 2001: The 25th Hour is a wonderfully written first novel that convincingly portrays the New York City of Wall Street brokers and middle-class white drug dealers, the new affluent class in a city where money can buy you almost anything and is often the most important factor in young people's lives.

Monty Brogan is about to start his last day of freedom before turning himself into the authorities and serving a seven-year term for drug dealing. He's a charming young man who had always dreamed of being a fireman, following in the working-class footsteps of his father, who has had to put up his bar in Queens as bond so that his son can stay out of jail until his sentence begins. Monty, named for Montgomery Clift, does not know how he managed to get himself into this predicament. It was easy money and it carried so many perks, and you'll feel more than a little sympathy for this young man who has managed to kill his own dream for courtside seats at Madison Square Garden.

But before he goes to prison, Monty wants to have one last night out on the town with his two best friends. Frank Slattery is a bond trader, one of the best and most successful risk takers in a very risky business. The other is Jakob Elinsky, an English teacher who envies his friends' lifestyles but who has no intention of ever giving up his job for the easy money, despite the disillusionment of teaching high school students in a tough school.

The three young men enjoy the night into the early morning as they eat, drink, and visit the hottest spots in town. It's a sad night for Monty, but he has a plan that neither Frank nor Jacob know about--and it makes for a shocking ending to this brilliant and disturbing story. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly
HIn 24 hours, handsome 27-year-old drug dealer Monty Brogan will enter Otisville Federal Prison to do seven years hard time. 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. In this character-driven crime novel, first-time novelist Benioff dazzles with a spellbinding portrait of three high school buddies confronting the consequences of their carefree youth on the streets of New York. Monty really wanted to be a fireman, but fell in love with "sway," the deference afforded a young man with important connections. For the past five years, he's been selling drugs for Uncle Blue in Manhattan, to moneyed and celebrity clients. His pal, maverick bond trader Frank Slattery, thirsts for serenity, but dreams of avenging old wrongs while fighting his covert lust for Monty's Puerto Rican girlfriend. Despite Monty's dismal future, shy Jakob Elinsky, an ethical, awkward high school English teacher, envies his friend's self-assurance with women as he struggles to control his own secret hunger for a talented writing student, 17-year-old Mary D'Annunzio. The three friends spend one last night together dancing and drinking at Uncle Blue's nightclub. Amid the false merriment, Monty is summoned upstairs to a heart-stopping confrontation with his former boss. 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 agonizing dilemmas will shock even hardened suspense lovers. Film rights to New Line Cinema for a movie to star Toby McGuire. (Jan.) Forecast: With the hip talk and high tension of Richard Price's Clockers, and the assured prose and grasp of character of a seasoned novelist, Benioff's debut may hit the cash registers right out of the gate. It's no wonder that Benioff has been nominated for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, or that the book carries happy blurbs from George P. Pelacanos, Vincent Patric and Ann Patchett.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
Busted for drug dealing and facing a seven-year stretch in federal prison upstate, a flashy, fast-talking, twenty-six-year-old Brooklynite named Monty Brogan has one day in which to settle his affairs––or to make his escape. While he wanders the city, brooding on lost opportunities, his two best friends from high school (continually engaged in Seinfeldian bickering) and a handful of associates from the Russian mob converge for a late-night going-away party in the V.I.P. lounge of a downtown club. Benioff's first novel is as unusual as it is well wrought: it resonates with a Whitmanesque sense of the city's possibilities and unsatisfied longings.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

I am adding this book to my top 5 all-time favorites!
At last...after reading a series of bad books, not-so-good books and, worst of all, those that had such promise but somewhere along the way, took a wrong turn...I have read THE book!

"The 25th Hour" is one of the best books I have ever read. It is an account of the 24-hour period before a young man convicted of drug dealing is due to start serving a seven-year sentence in a Federal prison.

During this short time span, you will come face to face with friendship, love, fear, hope and despair. You will spend time with three men who have been friends since middle school. You will get to know them so intimately, it will feel almost intrusive. Along the way, you will meet their parents, friends, lovers and enemies.

I can only urge you to spend some time with these people. When you have read the last word on the last page, you will be trembling, crying or just sitting in awe of the ride you have just been on.

Short but Sweet
Although just under 200 pages, David Benioff's masterful first novel draws you into a world that you never want to end. Ostensibly a "mystery" (where else are they gonna shelve it?), "The 25th Hour" is a book unlike any you have ever read, yet is so familiar and has characters so recognizable that it's like curling up late at night with a warm gun.

A voracious reader, I can't stand tin-ear dialogue, and it's that more than anything else that will have me tossing some half-read "thriller" across the room in frustration. Not one word of Mr. Benioff's novel rings false. I'd rather invest 4 hours in words as beautifully gritty as these than slog my way through the latest 700-page Clancy.

Benioff's masterstroke is that, even though you know his "protaganist" is guilty in all senses of the word, the classic anti-hero, you root for him the entire way.

Oh, yeah, the last 20 pages are the best you'll ever read.

Penzler Scores Again
From now on I'm just letting Otto choose all my leisure reading. His picks are almost always right on the money, and this novel is no exception. I grew up not far from the action of "The 25th Hour," and Beniof gets the city exactly right. New York is almost a character in its own right, mysterious and beautiful and dangerous.

I think the last four pages are some of the best writing I've seen in a long time. This isn't a book for kids, though. I won't let son read it for a while. But if you're over eighteen and you like tough but heartbreaking stories, this one's really superb. Two thumbs up!