How long does it take to read True Crime?
The Novel
True Crime by Andrew Klavan takes about 8 hours 5 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 5 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1995. 441 pages, about 121,275 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 29 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 5 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 3 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
<i>True Crime</i> is an edge-of-the-seat suspense novel that graphically portrays the final moments leading up to a condemned killer's appointment with the executioner. The plot is familiar but convincing: An inmate, Frank Beachum, denies any involvement in the murder of a young pregnant woman. His only chance for survival lies in the hands of a reporter, Steven Everett. From the very first page, however, veteran suspense writer Andrew Klavan does everything possible to make this journalist unlikable--he drinks too much, he's committed adultery. In fact, the incarcerated Beachum, who stands accused of a hideous crime, comes across as a much more decent person than Everett. Foes of capital punishment will find in True Crime another buttress to the oft-expressed argument that state-sanctioned murder is not always just, that some police investigations are sloppy even when they're not politically tinged or racially motivated, and that exonerating evidence is often overlooked. Here such evidence is so glaringly overlooked that it's possible for a somewhat drunken reporter with plenty of other things on his mind (a wife who's about to leave him and a boss who's just discovered that Everett is cuckolding him) to spot the inconsistencies. He follows a hunch, discovers the identity of the real killer, and tries to clear Beachum's name as the minutes tick away. The relentless pace and Klavan's crisp, taut writing make the suspension of disbelief possible, and no doubt Clint Eastwood, who stars in the movie version, will make Steven Everett a more likely and likable hero. --<i>Jane Adams</i>
Subjects: Fiction, Trials (Murder), Journalists, Death row inmates, Trials (Murder) -- Fiction, Journalists -- Fiction
