Furious Hours - Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

Informationen zum Autor Casey Cep is at work on the authorized biography of Harper Lee. A staff writer at The New Yorker , she is the author of the bestselling book Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee . She was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she still lives with her family. Klappentext Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. The true story of an Alabama serial killer whose dramatic case for a while inspired "To Kill A Mockingbird" author Harper Lee to write her own never-completed equivalent of "In Cold Blood". Zusammenfassung A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE 2020 CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION A SUNDAY TIMES , ECONOMIST AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR ' A triumph on every level . One of the losses to literature is that Harper Lee never found a way to tell a gothic true-crime story she'd spent years researching. Casey Cep has excavated this mesmerizing story and tells it with grace and insight and a fierce fidelity to the truth. ' DAVID GRANN, author of Killers of the Flower Moon _____________________________ The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted - thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. As Alabama is consumed by these gripping events, it's not long until news of the case reaches Alabama's - and America's - most famous writer. Intrigued by the story, Harper Lee makes a journey back to her home state to witness the Reverend's killer face trial. Harper had the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research. Lee spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more years trying to finish the book she called The Reverend . Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. This is the story Harper Lee wanted to write. This is the story of why she couldn't. _____________________________ ' Fascinating ... Cep has spliced together a Southern-gothic tale of multiple murder and the unhappy story of Lee's literary career, to produce a tale that is engrossing in its detail and deeply poignant ... [Cep] spends the first third of Furious Hours following the jaw-dropping trail of murders ... Engrossing ... Cep writes about all this with great skill, sensitivity and attention to detail .' SUNDAY TIMES ' It's been a long time since I picked up a book so impossible to put down . Furious Hours made me forget dinner, ignore incoming calls, and stay up reading into the small hours. It's a work of literary and legal detection as gripping as a thriller . But it's also a meditation on motive and mystery, the curious workings of history, hope, and ambition, justice, and the darkest matters of life and death. Casey Cep's investigation into an infamous Southern murder trial and Harper Lee's quest to write about it is a beautiful, sobering, and sometimes chilling triumph .'...

Report

It's been a long time since I picked up a book so impossible to put down. Furious Hours made me forget dinner, ignore incoming calls, and stay up reading into the small hours. It's a work of literary and legal detection as gripping as a thriller. But it's also a meditation on motive and mystery, the curious workings of history, hope, and ambition, justice, and the darkest matters of life and death. Casey Cep's investigation into an infamous Southern murder trial and Harper Lee's quest to write about it is a beautiful, sobering, and sometimes chilling triumph. Helen Macdonald, author of 'H is for Hawk'

Product details

• Authors: Casey Cep
• Publisher: Windmill Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.05.2020
• EAN: 9780099510598
• ISBN: 978-0-09-951059-8
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 21 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; True Crime, TRUE CRIME / Murder / Serial Killers, United States of America, USA