Thursday, March 04, 2021

FURIOUS HOURS: MURDER, FRAUD, AND THE LAST TRIAL OF HARPER LEE


 Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Casey Cep, Knopf, 2019, 336 pp

This was the February pick for my Bookie Babes reading group and I was not sure I would be happy with it since it is nonfiction and I was longing to discuss fiction. No problem. It was great!

I am surely a fan of Harper Lee. I have read To Kill A Mockingbird and seen the movie. I have read the controversial Go Set A Watchman and the Charles Shields biography Mockingbird. Casey Cep managed to incorporate those books and the movie into a deep diving story of Alabama as it influenced Lee's writing and her life.

Furious Hours has three parts, ingeniously constructed like a puzzle that leads to "the last trial of Harper Lee."

Part One: The Reverend concerns a Black man in Alabama, born in the year that Alabama Power began to build a dam which would flood a large area not too far from Harper Lee's family home and thus bring electricity to the state. Willie Maxwell did become a Reverend, preaching to a wide flock of African American Southern Baptists. 

He was also a con man who perfected a life insurance scam. He ensured, then murdered three wives and numerous relatives, after which he collected their death benefits as beneficiary of their policies. He became rich, feared in his community, and suspected of practicing voodoo.

Part Two: The Lawyer. Tom Radney was an Alabama defense lawyer and politician with Presidential aspirations. He became famous for never losing a case. The Reverend Willie Maxwell hired Radney each time he was accused of murder but was never convicted of either murder or fraud.

Part Three: The Writer. Years passed and Tom Radney never made it to the White House due to being too progressive for a Southern politician. When a member of the Reverend's congregation put three bullets into the Reverend's head, that member was charged with murder.

Tom Radney took the case intending to get the murderer of his former, now deceased client, off on an insanity plea. Harper Lee arrived, after years of isolation and no novel to follow To Kill A Mockingbird, watched the trial and determined to write a true crime account of the entire story.

Though the whole book was fascinating from a historical standpoint, Part Three was the best. It was a relief to have Harper Lee finally appear. The amount of biographical material about her in this section stands way above what Charles Shields presented in his biography. I learned more about her relationship with the infamous Truman Capote than I had read anywhere else. 

Casey Cep writes perceptively about Harper Lee's well known writers block and then details the extreme effort The Writer made to bring her book to completion. As far as we know she failed though I was left with the hope that, like Go Set A Watchman, it could still someday appear.

If you are a Harper Lee fan and/or a true crime aficionado, you will most likely be as thrilled with Furious Hours as I and my reading group members were. Casey Cep showed herself to be a consummate writer of creative nonfiction. The amount of history, biography, and cultural critique she fit into just a little over 300 pages is a feat. Especially because she made it so easy to follow and so delicious to read.

24 comments:

  1. Great review! I am both a Harper Lee fan and also a true crime/nonfiction fan. Furious Hours is right up my alley. In fact, I meant to read this book last year.

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    1. This book is perfect for you then!

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  2. I had heard a lot about this book. It sounds so very interesting.I habe not read much True Crime but the better entries seem well worth it.

    I wonder what Harper Lee would have produced had she had produced real, complete books after To Kill a Mockingbird.

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    1. In this book you can learn about what she was trying to produce in those years, how she lost both her agent and editor. I understood how much publishing is a team effort.

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  3. I'm ready to cut right to Part 3! I'm not sure I care about the first two particulars ... but it's curious that she was there for the trial and did not write anything from it. Hmm. I will have to read it.

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    1. Some others whose reviews I've seen felt the same. I enjoyed the build up and how she fit it all together as well as how Harper Lee came to be there. She actually did write a lot, possibly an entire book, but was not happy with it. I don't think she destroyed her manuscript which is why I wonder if it might still get published some day.

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  4. As you describe it, the book sounds fascinating.

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    1. It is! Maybe especially for you because of the location.

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  5. I am so excited that you read this and liked it! It has been on my TBR for a while, and I am going to be getting my hands on this one as soon as possible. In fact I will probably check if the library has it as soon as I am done here.

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    1. I was thinking of you constantly while reading it. It is just so your thing.

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    2. I am reading it now! As soon I as I left that comment I went and grabbed the ebook from the library! I am planning to finish it today, the story is so bananas that sometimes I get lost in it and forget that Harper Lee has yet to make an appearance since the very opening!

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    3. Wait until you see how it all fits together! Maybe by now you have.

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    4. Not quite yet, did more blogging yesterday than I intended so I had to write while I was on a roll, lol. After I finish up comments I am going to read a bit more and see what happens!

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    5. Finished it last night. It made me sad all over again, reflecting on her death, and the way the publication of Go Set a Watchman came about. If anyone could have written The Reverend, it was Harper Lee. The fact that she could not, tells me his story alone is one that simply can't be written.

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    6. I look forward to your full review!

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  6. Never heard of this book but now I wanna read it!

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    1. You know what? I had not either. I sure am glad my reading group picked it.

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  7. Hello!! Thanks for your recommendation! I will add it in my TBR list straight away! I am not a Harper Lee fan but I have been wanting to read 'To Kill a Mokingbirg' for a long time. Plus I have been reading a lot of crime novels lately but non of them were true crime so I'd love to try. This book really looks great. Take care :)

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    1. I would be so interested to know what you think both about To Kill A Mockingbird and Furious Hours. Both books give a deep look into the American South, especially the state of Alabama. I think I tend to see other countries as one place when in reality every country has specific and different regions. Right?

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  8. This is not a book I would have picked by myself but after that review, I can't say that's true anymore. I do like a true crime like this one, and the fact that there is at least one well-known and well-liked person makes it all the more interesting.

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    1. I would not have read this if not for my reading group. Now I am so glad they picked it.

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  9. Interesting. I have only read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and am not sure whether I'd like to read "Go Set a Watchman". Well, if you read it, maybe I will ...

    Anyway, this also sounds great. I never heard of it.

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    1. Go Set A Watchman was good, I thought. And when I read Furious Hours I learned the story of how it was set aside for a different revision which became To Kill a Mockingbird.

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    2. So, looks like that goes on my wishlist, as well. LOL

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