Harper Lee knew a good story when she heard one. Trouble is, she couldn't find the path to organize this one into another book.

It wasn't entirely her fault.

The Rev. Willie Maxwell, the son of an African-American sharecropper, was an elusive character, and none of the other figures in his story proved a fitting protagonist either.

Maxwell is believed to have murdered at least five people, all of them family members, in a fraudulent insurance scheme. His crimes were so poorly planned and blatantly obvious it almost seemed like he wanted to get caught. Yet, law enforcement agencies in several counties were unable to assemble sufficient evidence, and juries couldn't convict him of any of the murders.

Despite only seven years of formal education, Maxwell seems to have been an intelligent and charismatic man. He raised himself from humble origins to serve honorably in the Army, earned ordination as a Baptist minister and a certificate of theological study from Selma University, and demonstrated enough entrepreneurial drive to start several businesses. But greed has done in many a man and he must have seen insurance fraud as a quicker route to success.

Maxwell's fate was ultimately decided by a relative of his last victim, who shot him dead in front of hundreds of witnesses at her funeral.

Ironically, Tom Radney, the attorney who had defended Maxwell and helped him collect the insurance on his victims, also defended Robert Burns, his killer, and got him off with a defense of temporary insanity.

Harper Lee doesn't become the true focus of the book until more than a hundred pages in. There's plenty of meat before that, though, with insights into Maxwell and his attorney and fascinating tidbits on southern history, insurance fraud and true crime, including Lee's time as a researcher for Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

A compelling read and a stunning debut for Casey Cep.

by John Lindermuth
Rambles.NET
4 January 2020

Furious Hours by Casey Cep is just about impossible to categorise. The subtitle has one expecting a true crime story but it turns out to be so very much more that that. It is a fascinating tale -- or tales -- so very well told that if you intend to start it make sure your schedule is clear for the coming days.

The central theme does involve crime with a man who may or may not be bumping off relatives -- including wives -- and collecting unimaginably varied payouts on insurance policies. Woven into his story we find a brilliant early 20th-century history of the Deep South with all its colourful characters like George Wallace and Huey Long.

Then we get another crime with a different perpetrator that brings us a very interesting trial attended by Harper Lee and her intention of finally having a followup to To Kill a Mockingbird. This transfers us to her story, and we learn of her childhood friendship with Truman Capote. I was amazed to learn of her subsequent deep involvement in the book In Cold Blood, where she appears to have been more effective than Capote in amassing the facts that eventually appeared in that book. (We also learn of the long gestation that book took because the perpetrators were caught and due to their later appeals.)

We learn of the many twists and turns and edits and suggestions that went to make Mockingbird so good and of the great success that it became. A very interesting item concerns whether it was that success -- especially financial, with its tax implications -- that caused Lee to avoid writing another book for so long.

The story of Harper Lee and her family is a revelation in itself.

This book is crime, history, biography, literary criticism and so much more.

by Nicky Rossiter
Rambles.NET
4 January 2020

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