In the memorably hot summer of 1988 in Newton, Mass., Jack Connor murdered his mother, father and grandmother. He left their corpses in the family home for a week, their lifeless faces covered with his grandmother's underwear, rosary beads in their hands. Now, 10 years later, readers join the story as John Emmanuel Connor awaits execution on Massachusetts' death row -- the first execution there in half a century.

Cornell alumnus and author Paul Cody's So Far Gone, a novel published by Picador USA, a literary imprint of St. Martin's Press, was released in February ($22; 240 pages, ISBN 0-312-18180-9).

"Many writers have attempted to plumb the criminal mind, but few have given us as penetrating and compassionate a portrait of both the mind and soul of a murderer as Cody does here," said a starred review (awarded to notable books) in Publisher's Weekly March 9. The review also called the novel "stunning."

Cody's novel begins when a priest visits Connor on death row, weeks before the execution, and suggests Connor write down everything he can remember -- sending him on an emotional odyssey into his past that floats between childhood horror and adult isolation.

Readers discover fragments of terror and loss that deprived a sad Boston boy of his innocence. In a world of insomnia and nightmares, of narrow staircases and dripping faucets, Jack Connor grew up feeling ashamed and inept.

Cody intersperses Jack's memories with witness accounts by neighbors, a prison guard, a journalist, police officers and the priest, each struggling in his or her own way to understand Jack's gruesome crime.

Maurice Conway, an undertaker who knew the family and accepted the grim task of preparing the bodies of Jack's mother, father and grandmother for burial, says of Jack, "We will bury him with the dignity that he seems to have so lacked in life. At that point, my work with the unfortunate Connor family will be over."

Or Wade Christie, a Newton Police detective who is awakened and arrives at the Connor home at 3:30 a.m., and describes walking through the death house. "We couldn't find the light switches at first, so we used flashlights. I think I'll always remember what that looked and felt like. The red and blue flashers still going on the cruisers out front, and lighting up patches of walls and ceiling and doorways there on the second floor. Then the stink, and how weird the place was. Stacks of paper and dishes and empty cups and glasses and bottles all over the place."

Kirkus Reviews called So Far Gone "a skillful novel of great power, anger and compassion," and Andrea Barrett, winner of the 1997 National Book Award in fiction for Ship Fever, said, "This extraordinary novel renders rich and complicated the inner life of a man we might all too easily despise. What we feel in the end for Jack Connor is the fullest empathy, nothing less than love. That we're brought to this through the novel's elegant structure, sinuous prose and beautifully rounded characters is a kind of miracle."

Cody covers the university's arts and humanities programs for the Cornell News Service. Born and raised outside Boston, he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 1982 and earned a master's of fine arts from Cornell in 1987. A New York Foundation for the Arts grant winner, his work has appeared in Harper's, Story, The Quarterly and The Boston Sunday Globe Magazine. Cody's work also has been featured on Voice of America. He has taught fiction writing at Cornell and is a former staff writer for Cornell Magazine. His previous novels are Eyes Like Mine (1996) and The Stolen Child (1995).