O‘Nan, Stewart: The Speed Queen

“If you haven’t read Stewart O’Nan, you have some catching up to do.”—Stephen King  “Scathing and intelligent . . . Makes the skin crawl.” — Los Angeles Times   In Stewart O’Nan’s cult classic crime novel, a death-row inmate gives her confession—a hair-raising tale of sex, drugs and murder across Oklahoma—in this “sexy, breathless, and pitch-perfect tale.” ( Detour ).  I bet everyone asks you about Jack in ‘The Shining’ and whether that’s supposed to be you. You say no, I bet, or maybe he’s just a little part of you. This’ll be more like ‘Dolores Claiborne’ meets ’The Green Mile,’ but still…    Marjorie Standiford sits on Oklahoma‘s death row, hours away from execution, speaking into a tape recorder, telling her life story. She‘s answering questions about how she became the Speed Queen, one of the Mach 6 Killers--how mainlining speed with her husband Lamont and her lover Natalie grew into dealing, how dealing grew into robbery, and robbery into mass murder. She‘s telling her story because she wants to set the record straight, to correct the lies in Natalie‘s book, which became a bestseller.  Marjorie‘s book will be better. It will be written by a bestselling novelist.   Told in Marjorie‘s dreamy, bemused, unforgettable voice, set against a uniquely American landscape of fast-food joints and endless highways, and scored by the blare of the dashboard radio, The Speed Queen is a taut, violent, darkly comic story into the dark soul of America’s Heartland.