David Klass

David Klass places ethical questions inside suspense as both a novelist and screenwriter. Out of Time: A Novel follows FBI agent Tom Smith as he pursues an environmental extremist known as the Green Man. The fugitive has carried out attacks intended to delay ecological destruction and announces that another is coming, turning the investigation into both a manhunt and an argument about means and ends. Their contest unfolds through clues, competing ideas, and the possibility of mass harm. Dutton published the American edition in 2020, while Penguin issued the book as Out of Time. Klass has written novels for younger readers as well as more than forty screenplays, including the adaptation of James Patterson's Kiss the Girls. That experience is visible in the novel's staged pursuit, but its central conflict depends on more than action. Out of Time: A Novel asks how legitimate fear about the planet can become a rationale for violence, and what responsibility an investigator has when he recognizes part of an opponent's diagnosis.