The Confession

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story” (The Washington Post) from “the master of the legal thriller” (USA Today), an innocent man is about to be executed—and only a guilty man can save him.

WINNER OF THE HARPER LEE PRIZE FOR LEGAL FICTION

For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn’t understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn’t care. He just can’t believe his good luck, content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed.

Travis Boyette is such a man. In the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.

Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?