True Crime: The Novel - Tapa dura

Six years ago, Frank Beachum was convicted of the murder of a shop clerk and sentenced to die by lethal injection. Now his appeals have run out, and his number has come up. There is nothing left for him to do but say good-bye to the wife and child he loves, get his mind right with the God in whom he believes - and give one last statement to the public: an interview with a reporter for the St. Louis News.
Steve Everett is the reporter. Despised by his colleagues and unfaithful to his wife, he's looking for a big story to get his life and career back on track. The last thing he needs is to waste his time on a human-interest feature about a convicted killer's last testament. But Everett is good at what he does, and when the Beachum interview is dropped in his lap, he begins to uncover another story - a more frightening story - just below the surface.
As Frank Beachum's time dwindles to nothing, Everett begins to believe that the man may be a wholly guiltless victim of rough justice, political blindness and human error. He believes the state may be about to murder an innocent.
There are eighteen hours until midnight. In those hours Frank Beachum is going to be pushed to the very limits of his faith, looking over the edge into a nightmare. And Steve Everett, in spite of himself, is going to risk everything, even his own life, in a breathless attempt to save him.

on death row. One is a convicted murderer scheduled to die at midnight; the other is a cynical, self-destructive journalist who races the clock to prevent the law from making the ultimate mistake. True Crime is a newspaperman's minute-by-minute account of his race over the course of nine hours to find evidence that will exonerate the condemned man, and of that man's increasingly desperate struggle to hold on.