The brilliant debut novel from the bestselling author of City of Thieves and the co-creator of t he HBO series Game of Thrones , about a white-collar drug dealer's last night out in New York City before going to jail Adapted as a feature film by Spike Lee starring Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman “Novels like The 25th Hour don't fall out of trees every day. The tone is dark and intense; its elegant style is cut on the raw side; and the characters come from places we've all been.” — The New York Times All Monty Brogan ever really wanted when he grew up was to be a fireman. Now he's about to start a seven-year stretch in the federal penitentiary for drug dealing. With just twenty-four hours of freedom to go, he prowls the city with his girlfriend and his two best friends from high school—a high-flying bond trader and an idealistic teacher. As the minutes count down, Monty seizes one last chance to stack the odds in his favor. Hurtling from the money pits of Wall Street to Manhattan's downtown lounge and club scene, from the enclaves of the Russian mob to the old immigrant neighborhoods, The 25th Hour evokes the pulsing rhythms and diamond-hard edges of a city in the raw, illusory hours between midnight and dawn. A taut and mesmerizing tale of an urban purgatory suspended between the crime and the punishment, The 25th Hour is a major player in contemporary noir fiction. Busted for drug dealing and facing a seven-year stretch in federal prison upstate, a flashy, fast-talking, twenty-six-year-old Brooklynite named Monty Brogan has one day in which to settle his affairs––or to make his escape. While he wanders the city, brooding on lost opportunities, his two best friends from high school (continually engaged in Seinfeldian bickering) and a handful of associates from the Russian mob converge for a late-night going-away party in the V.I.P. lounge of a downtown club. Benioff's first novel is as unusual as it is well wrought: it resonates with a Whitmanesque sense of the city's possibilities and unsatisfied longings. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker "Benioff writes against the clock with a kind of muscular, young-dude swagger, and his portrait of pre-9/11 New York feels like a snapshot of a lost city, full of sticky-floored bodegas and silent, snow-crusted streets. " -- The New York Times “Captivating . . . A pungent, funny, urban tableau full of shrewd operators and unfulfilled desires.” —The New York Times “Tight and crisp . . . . The 25th Hour shines. It couldn't get much better.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Remarkable . . . A darkly human novel that ends up more about hope than about cynicism.” —The Denver Post David Benioff was born and raised in New York City. He adapted his first novel, The 25th Hour , into the feature film directed by Spike Lee. With many other screenplays to his credit, he is also the writer of the films, "Brothers" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". Stories from his critically acclaimed collection When the Nines Roll Over appeared in Best New American Voices and The Best Nonrequired American Reading . His latest novel is City of Thieves . He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter where he is a co-creator and writer for the HBO hit series "Game of Thrones."