THE 24TH LETTER

An innocent man is scheduled to be executed in 84 hours.

Sam Spelling, a convicted felon preparing to testify for the prosecution in a major drug case, is gunned down on the courtyard steps. Under protective custody in a hospital room, he has a religious epiphany and confesses to Father John that Charlie Williams, incarcerated for the murder of his supermodel girlfriend 11 years ago, didn’t do it. Spelling not only knows who really did it but has hidden the murder weapon. Father John contacts his retired friend Sean O’Brien, a former Miami homicide cop now living 50 miles west of Daytona with his miniature dachshund Max. O’Brien wants to help free the man he had wrongly convicted, but matters get complicated when Spelling is murdered in his hospital bed and Father John is killed in his church. Dying, he scrawls three clues in his own blood: the numbers 666, the Greek letter omega and three English letters, P-A-T. With the help of some old buddies from Miami Homicide and an FBI special agent he worked with before (A False Dawn, 2009), O’Brien races to decipher the clues and nail the killer before Williams is strapped to a gurney and executed. Drugs, pedophilia, a stone crab with humongous claws and interrogation techniques not sanctioned by due process will come into play before a call from the governor sets matters right.

The fast pace and physical smackdowns will be perfect for fans of TV’s 24.