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

After writing the American classic To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee spent years working on a non-fiction project (in the vein of her friend Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood) about an Alabama preacher who murdered five members of his family over a span of seven years to collect insurance money. Lee’s book never came to fruition but now, Caesy Cep, resurrects the bizarre tale as well as illuminates Harper Lee’s cryptic life.

The book is composed of three parts. Part One tells the story of Reverend Willie Maxwell, a charismatic but vilified preacher who was rumored to practice voodoo. After a string of family deaths, in which all the victims were covered by life insurance polices that benefited Maxwell, he is shot dead by another family member at the funeral of his last victim. Part Two covers Tom Radney, the lawyer who first defended Maxwell when he was accused of killing his first wife and went on to successfully defend the man who killed Maxwell. Part Three brings in Harper Lee, who was fascinated by the case and spent years researching it.

The writing is brilliant. The first chapter, which describes the region of south Alabama where the events took place, is evocative and rich. I lived in Alabama for most of my life and was impressed that a non-Southerner captured both the geography of place as well as highlighting so vividly the oppressed attitudes and politics of the state. Occasionally the author lost my interest, such as when she gives a world history of life insurance or the section on Radney, who is a great character in the book but unless you enjoy courtroom recreations, it is a bit of a yawn.

The book rebounds, however, in the last section which covers the life of Harper Lee. Apparently, the author had access to Lee’s private letters which she quotes frequently. Lee’s childhood, family life, education, college years, and her move to New York City where she eventually wrote Mockingbird is wonderfully detailed and provides great insight into her later years when she struggled to produce a follow-up.

Lee’s friendship with Capote is also extensively discussed as well as her stint working with him to gather research for his masterpiece In Cold Blood. On Capote, the author writes most of the people of Garden City (Kansas) had no idea what to make of the orchid that had suddenly invaded their wheat fields.

A fascinating, beautifully written and skillfully researched book that brings to light one of the most bizarre cases in American history.

This is a really interesting book that shows both the promise and flaws of using primary source research when the author doesn’t have the ability to do first-hand interviews anymore.

Casey Cep has put together a history of a serial killer (more like someone who had no problem using murder to cash in on insurance), a liberal lawyer who was happy to defend all comers, and Harper Lee’s curmudgeonly life of her later years looking for something, anything, to give herself one last literary break.

All three elements come together with the use of old records, stories, interviews, and exactly the sort of deep, deep attention to detail that you’d expect from a New Yorker journalist. If there’s a fact she can uncover, she includes it – so you have history not just of people but of the insurance industry, publishing, and all sort of intriguing offshoots.

But – the drawback with this approach is you can only go as far as it will take you, and there are stones impossible to uncover. The “Reverend” Maxwell is dead – so any insight into his motivation dies with him (although, it’s pretty clearly money), I don’t exactly understand why lawyer Tom Radney would defend such an obviously guilty criminal so many times (again, probably the money), and it’s not entirely clear why Harper Lee took up the story, and then dropped it – there’s room for speculation, sure, but it never *quite* comes into focus.

Bottom line seems to be she just couldn’t come up with the literary angle, or her drinking led to writer’s block, or she just lost interest, or she couldn’t decide between fiction and fact, or without a great editor to help she couldn’t self-direct, or…so there’s a lot of questions about what happened at the end.

I don’t mind having unanswered questions, and this look into a forgotten history of a literary icon is worth it no matter what – but it reminded me that as good a researcher as Cep or others can be, you can’t read minds. Lee had her own flaws that her fame probably exacerbated. This is certainly not a comprehensive biography of any one part of this story – the facts are lost to history – but it’s pretty interesting all the same. If you’re a fan of Harper Lee and want further insight into her life and creative choices (or lack of choices), this is an intriguing book.

This was recommended to me as part of a reading prescription for a reading retreat. I very much enjoyed it. It was full of fascinating details about life in the southern states of America, the life and times of Harper Lee and the details of the murder case which caught her eye.

This book is over-written & goes into constant minute detail with endless tangents and asides meaning that it does not hang together. This all adds up to an over-long read & it feels more like a graduate research project than a biography (actually, it is a biography of several people all told).

Turgid & irritating to read, it could be double the book at half the length. This is more the fault of the editor than the author.

That said, it does provide interesting background to In Cold Blood ( Capote) and To Kill a Mockingbird. A must-read for students of the above; perhaps not for the rest of us (until edited!).

A gripping murder trial alongside a biography of Harper Lee’s writers block brilliantly told. Lee always wanted to write her own In Cold Blood, this book isn’t far off.

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