Crime Time: VIRTUAL Book Club: Furious Hours

Can’t get enough of the true crime genre? Looking for something to do after binging shows like Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, McMillions, and The Vow? Then join the Livingston Public Library for the brand new virtual book club, Crime Time. Crime Time is a true crime and crime adjacent book club where readers will explore everything from historical crime to unsolved mysteries.

For our July meeting we will be reading:  Furious Hours : Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee  by Casey N. Cep

Copies are available at the main desk.  

Registration is required.  A Zoom link will be sent out the day before the program.

Summary:

This “superbly written true-crime story” (Michael Lewis, The New York Times Book Review) masterfully brings together the tales of a serial killer in 1970s Alabama and of Harper Lee, the beloved author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who tried to write his story.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members, but with the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative assassinated him 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 himself. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more trying to finish the book she called The Reverend.

Cep brings this remarkable story to life, from the horrifying murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South, while offering a deeply moving portrait of one of our most revered writers.