Dead Run The Untold Story of Dennis Stockton and America's Only Mass escape from Death Row Hardback - 1999

First line

Dennis Stockton watched the rolling hills of Virginia's Piedmont scroll across the windows of the hot, sealed prison van.

Media reviews

Early Readers Praise A Riveting Jailhouse Drama

"Dead Run is a gripping true narrative, remarkable for the manner in which it treats crime and punishment, and the issue of justice in this country, on a level that should trouble one's deepest conscience. . . . What gives the tale much of its extraordinary fascination is its rendition of life on Death Row as seen through Stockton's eyes. . . . Colorful, ironic and cheerfully mordant . . . [he] came to the writer's calling fairly late in life, and this straightforward and often pungently stoical record of his slow inching toward death was all he had to give us, before the state exacted its retribution. . . . It is a gift we should treasure, bearing witness as it does to Stockton's own appealing humanity, and the inhumanity of the law that destroyed him."--from William Styron's Introduction

"Whew! This is great stuff, ingeniously told, hard to put down. The first page hustles you through the prison gates and you don't get out until the last line. This is the sort of inside stuff that outsiders who have studied prisons for years just don't get, written as it is not by an outsider looking in, but through the eyes of an arguably innocent man whose brutally
honest account of what it feels like to be a dead man walking is both captivating and horrific. The two authors--reporters who covered Stockton's story--have done a brilliant job letting him carry the book. In a sensitive and unfettered voice, Stockton's story is told with such searing honesty that a reader wants to jump to his feet and yell, 'Stop this insanity!'
as he is being led to the execution chamber."--Pete Earley, author of The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison