When Travis Boyette is paroled because of inoperable brain tumor, for the first time in his life, he decides to do the right thing and tell police about a crime he committed and another man is about to be executed for.

Melvin Mars awaits his fate on Death Row. He was one of America's most promising football stars until, aged twenty-years-old, he was arrested and convicted for the murder of his parents just as he was due to begin a very lucrative contract with the NFL. When Amos Decker, newly appointed special agent with the FBI, hears the news that Melvin was saved in the final seconds before his execution because someone has confessed to the killings, he persuades...

Grieving the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak reluctantly accepts a case from a suspected murderer who may or may not be innocent.

"No man truly fears a woman. Not even one who is her father's daughter. The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. She had called herself "death," but people called her the devil. Despite the media's chronicling of her tragic circumstances--the childhood spent with a violent father--no one could find sympathy for "the Beautiful Butcher" who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously...