A Perfect Execution
Binding, Tim
ISBN 10: 038525587X ISBN 13: 9780385255875
Published by Doubleday Canada, 1996
Used
Soft cover
From
Better World Books Ltd, Dunfermline, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
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This specific item is no longer available.
About this Item
Description:
Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 51184632-20
Synopsis:
In the Vale of Aylesbury, near Oxford, during World War II, a young man named Jeremiah Bembo is shaken to his core by the sight of a downed German pilot - mortally wounded, taunted by villagers, hanging from a tree. This horrible vision of death effects a profound change in him, and presents a kind of calling: to become a benevolent executioner, a figure of succor and compassion in men's final hours. In time he is England's swiftest, most expert hangman, a revered and dreaded legend known as Solomon Straw. A Perfect Execution is the story of Jeremiah, of Solomon, of a man so moved by death that he becomes a merciful angel. It is also the story of the world that turns around him: of his wife, Judith, whose passions wash like tides over her husband's stony stillness; of his brash cousin, Will, who vies for Judith's heart; and of three restless young people whose longings intersect in a small-town tragedy that encompasses Jeremiah, Judith, Will - and Solomon Straw.
Review: From the author of In the Kingdom of Air comes A Perfect Execution, the tale of Jeremiah Bembo, England's greatest hangman. Propelled by a murder-mystery plot, the book is more the tale of the discovery of the hangman's true human identity than it is just a conventional search for the true identity of a murderer. Rich with metaphor--Bembo comes from a family of puppeteers and Binding doesn't shy away from references to manipulating the strings of destiny--and tautly executed, A Perfect Execution does an admirable job of getting inside the head of an executioner and rendering him both believable and believably human.
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Bibliographic Details
Title: A Perfect Execution
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good