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

Locations
Call Number: Adult BOCD / Nonfiction / Biography / Cep, Casey N., BOCD 364.152 Ce
On Shelf At: Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult A/V 4-week checkout	Adult BOCD / Nonfiction / Biography / Cep, Casey N.	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	BOCD 364.152 Ce	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024

Compact discs.
Read by Hillary Huber.
"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. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own 'In Cold Blood,' the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case. 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."-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

All three books it tried to be were disappointing. submitted by Steve Amick on August 10, 2023, 2:06am This felt like three aborted attempts to write three different approaches to the same half-subject. There's really no story here, just the beginnings of what would be potentially juicy historical events, but either events just fizzled out or there wasn't enough research available. It was like a book report from an easily distracted child. The opening sets up the murder/insurance fraud racket as this potentially juicy true crime story, and then that doesn't come to fruition. There's not enough evidence. Then it shifts to a murder trial that promises to be a groundbreakering scandalous case, but that gets resolved relatively easily. Then Harper Lee shows up AFTER the trial, and does her typical half-assed attempt to get work done and never finishes that. If she wasn't part of one of the three elements of this non-story, there would be no interest in attempting to write a book about this. The three parts do not add up to one book. There's nothing new to learn about Harper Lee here. She couldn't make a book out of this, so it's kind of audacious for the writer to think she could.