Confessions of an Innocent Man

February 1, 2019
An acclaimed professor, memoirist, and activist delivers a debut novel that's a page-turner with a message.Rafael Zhettah doesn't want or need much out of life. He likes to cook at his restaurant, he likes to be alone, and not a single part of him expected to marry a billionaire and then be sent to death row for killing her, a murder he didn't commit. Dow (Law/University of Houston Law Center and History/Rice University; Things I've Learned from Dying, 2014, etc.) is the author of two memoirs detailing his experiences with the Texas Innocence Network, devoted to helping death row inmates with their appeals. His criminal justice work is a clear influence on this novel, and his passion bleeds through on every page. The claustrophobic nature of prisons, the routine cruelty, the anonymous suffering, the decrepit conditions--they all come through in straightforward, well-written prose. "Men do not go crazy from being locked in a cage. They do not go crazy from the outside pushing in. They crack from the inside pushing out. When you take away hope, madness fills its place, and madness is loud." Dow knows his stuff. Authenticity is this novel's strongest element, but the message can sometimes drown out the drama. Narrated by Zhettah in a quick, direct style, the novel feels like two books in one. The first half is about Zhettah's time on death row. The second features his intricate and intriguing plan for revenge--two judges, a missile silo, two planes, a parachute, some light computer hacking, and lots of MREs feature in his plotting. In this novel, justice is not just blind, it's hamstrung, but the reader knows from the start that the scales will be balanced by the end.A solidly suspenseful novel by an anti-death penalty activist that--despite some surprising detours--reads like a novel by an anti-death penalty activist.

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Starred review from April 1, 2019

DEBUT In this first novel from memoirist Dow (Things I've Learned from Dying), restaurateur Rafael Zhettah falls in love with Tieresse, an older, wealthy philanthropist. A year after the wedding, she's violently murdered. Despite an alibi and circumstantial evidence, Rafael is convicted, sentenced to death, and spends over six years on death row before previously withheld evidence is discovered and exonerates him. Unlike many who have been wrongfully convicted, Rafael's gratitude is mitigated by a need for retribution, which he quickly begins to seek out. The novel explores wrongful convictions, the death penalty and appeals process, life on death row, and exoneration. It's also about duplicity--the honest and hardworking man becoming a criminal only after a wrongful conviction; a legal system that seems too often to pit police, prosecutors, and judges against the truth--and features an ingenious, well-planned, and perfectly executed revenge. VERDICT This fast-paced legal thriller powerfully captures themes of love, surrender, despair, and vengeance. It will appeal to fans of Phillip Margolin and George Pelecanos, and pair nicely with Anthony Ray Hinton's memoir The Sun Does Shine. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/18.]--George Lichman, Rocky River, OH

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2019

Founder/director of the Texas Innocence Network, Dow brought his passionate concern about death-row injustices to his nonfiction The Autobiography of an Execution, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His first novel features Rafael Zhettah, son of poor Mexican immigrants sentenced to death for the murder of the older, patron-of-the-arts wife he loved deeply. Exonerated by DNA evidence, he swears revenge.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.