Octavo, 9 1/4" tall, 295 pages, stiff illustrated wraps. A near fine, clean, neat soft cover with light shelf wear, binding tight, paper cream white, with very slight soiling to the fore-edge.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: A Perfect Execution
Publisher: London : Picador
Publication Date: 1996
Language: English
ISBN 10: 038525587X
ISBN 13: 9780385255875
Binding: Paperback
Edition: First Paperback Edition.
Condition: near fine
Weight: 18 ounces

About this title

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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Store Description

Avenue Victor Hugo Books specialize in first editions of the best in fiction, history, biography, poetry, drama, and essay, as well as the good items which happen to come our way in other subjects. Genre literature such as Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, and Westerns will remain of special interest to us. We also carry many collectible magazines, including TIME, LIFE, National Geographic, and Playbill. Our catalogue features careful, considered assessments of all of our stock. We are not flippers selling books by the pound. Instead, we try to limit our stock to books in a condition we'd be proud to place on our personal bookshelves. Books are something to be cherished, so that's what we do. After years of running our bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay, our store has moved. We are now located in Lee, New Hampshire, less than 10 minutes from the University of New Hampshire. Our store is open from 10am to 6pm every Saturday.

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Avenue Victor Hugo Books LLC
1 Lee Hill Rd, Lee, NH, 03861, U.S.A.

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