Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to kill. Tomorrow, a life will hang in the balance. "Watermelon Row," a suspenseful, intricately plotted novel, tracks a day in the life of three men on the brink of violence and ruin. It tails Ed Harrison, a tough old man in his seventies, Scott Venn, a yuppie lawyer/sports agent, and Peter James, an unemployed loser, surveilling their dubious stories 'round the clock, from the relative sanctuary of their own beds to the place where they all fell most at home: The Rail?their favourite strip club?and their stage-side seats in "watermelon row." Strangers whose lives curiously dovetail, each man needs to escape himself. In booze. In the illusion of sex. But, hellbent on self-destruction, somebody goes too far. In the tradition of Martin Amis's "Success" and John O'Brien's "Leaving Las Vegas," Michael Holmes offers a brutally candid view of desperate living. "Watermelon Row" is both haute noir, and a work of surprising beauty and grace.