The Executioner's Song

Norman Mailer

Mailer renders Gilmore's crimes, his insistence on dying, and the media circus around his execution in flat, documentary prose across more than 1,000 pages.

A 'true life novel' about Gary Gilmore, who murdered two men in Utah in 1976 and then demanded to be executed, becoming the first person put to death in the U.S. after the death penalty was reinstated.