Reprieve

An autumn 2021 pick for New York Times * Observer * Esquire * O Quarterly * Chicago Tribune * Shondaland
'[A] gripping piece of storytelling' GUARDIAN
'Brilliantly conceived and unsettling' SUNDAY TIMES
'Clever, insightful and unnerving' OBSERVER
Most people didn't make it to Cell Six, he said. Most called out the safe word - reprieve - after the first Cell. It was that intense.
When Bryan, Jaidee, Victor and Jane team up to compete at a full-contact escape room, it seems simple. Hold your nerve through six terrifying challenges; collect all the red envelopes; win a huge cash prize.
But the real horror is unfolding outside of the game, in a series of deceits and misunderstandings fuelled by obsession and prejudice. And by the end of the night, one of the contestants will be dead.
A startlingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism, and seamlessly threads together trial transcripts, evidence descriptions, and deeply layered individual narratives to present a chilling portrait of American life.

James Han Mattson was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in North Dakota. The author of one previous novel, The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recipient of awards from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America and Humanities North Dakota. He is currently the fiction editor of Hyphen Magazine and has taught at the Universities of Iowa, Cape Town, Maryland, George Washington, Murray State and California, Berkeley. In 2009, he reunited with his Korean birth family after 30 years of separation.