THE CONFESSOR

This is a very competent, dramatic story about a compulsive confessor and the efforts to break through his fantasy before he is executed for a murder he didn't commit. Brain Martin Sinclair, 35, a highly intelligent Cadillac salesman, with a shadowy past, surrenders to the Houston police as the murderer of the wayward wife of a Nobel Prize physicist. Because of the notoriety of the case and Sinclair's flaunted sexual and intellectual arrogance, officials are anxious to convict him. Only the police psychiatrist finds the confession unacceptable, but, officially powerless, and unable to reach the recalcitrant prisoner, he can't do much except interest a few mavericks like himself in the case and the man. He's still trying even as Sinclair is being strapped in the chair. Almost immediately after his death the police receive notice that they had the wrong man. Subtlety could not be called The Confessor's strong point but it is very readable and seems almost ready-made for dramatization in another medium -- like the movies.