[2][3] It tells the story of Ezekiel Farragut, a university professor and drug addict who is serving time in Falconer State Prison for the murder of his brother.

Kirkus Reviews called Cheever's prose "an amazingly flexible instrument" and summarized the novel as "a strong fix—a statement of the human condition, a parable of salvation.

"[4] Reviewing the book in 1977 for The New York Times, Joan Didion wrote, "On its surface Falconer seems at first to be a conventional novel of crime and punishment and redemption—a story about a man who kills his brother, goes to prison for it and escapes, changed for the better—and yet the 'crime' in this novel bears no more relation to the 'punishment' than the punishment bears to the redemption.

[6] In 2009, Audible produced an audio version of Falconer, narrated by Jay Snyder, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.

In the episode "The Cheever Letters" of Seinfeld, it transpires that the father of Susan Ross had a passionate love affair with John Cheever, to the embarrassment of his wife and daughter.