Written in three parts Casey Cep has written the true crime novel Harper Lee had always wanted to write. Being a big fan of Scout and to Kill A Mockingbird I was thrilled to be given the chance to read Furious Hours. It's an amazing story and well written.

Really enjoyed this book. Particularly the part where we learnt all about harper lees early life, her childhood and her friendship with Truman Capote. Very well written about the true story of The Reverend Willie Maxwell.

I was really looking forward to this book based on the description but was very disappointed - to the stage that I have actually given up on it (which I really don't like doing).
It is supposed to tell the tall of Reverend Maxwell but gives far too much information about historical practices of the insurance companies, toxicology departments etc with only occasional references to Rev Maxwell that I lost interest. Persevered as long as possible but it has not improved by half way through the book.

Harper Lee's legacy; her incredibly successful, yet her only published novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird', means her name will always be revered in literary terms. Nonetheless, it has remained something of a mystery until now why she failed to publish any further work.

In Furious Hours, Casey Cep reveals a fascinating insight into the author; whose passion for writing never waned, but who found herself ultimately unable to produce that elusive second novel, despite holding in her grasp a story that would no doubt have been another best-seller.

Furious Hours is divided into three sections, the first providing the background to the Reverend Willie Maxwell and his heinous crimes which ultimately went unpunished, the second detailing the life of the reverend's then lawyer, while the third provides an in depth portrait of the woman Lee became after the publication of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

The three parts inevitably intertwine, providing a fascinating insight not only into the story, but also the private life of both Lee and her close friend Truman Capote.

This is essentially more than one book that has been put together which sadly deflects from the stories within them. The first part of the book, about Harper Lee, was fascinating and insightful but the latter part really lets the book down and does really tell any story at all

Hmm, so what was it, Harper Lee’s biography? Roundup of the most known facts of an famous crime? Was it really Lee’s book, or was it also Maxwell’s, Radney’s, Burn’s and Capote’s book? It’s a well written book about all of them and about the events that connect those people, but the Lee name is still the selling point of this book. It’s interesting and informing book.

Harper Lee, Truman Capote and the Reverend Willie Maxwell... 5 stars

In June, 1977, a man walked into a funeral home in Alabama during a service, accused one of the mourners, Reverend Willie Maxwell, of murder and shot him dead. When the shooter, Robert Burns, was subsequently tried for the murder of Maxwell, everyone wanted a seat in court. Harper Lee got one. Years after helping Truman Capote with the research that lay behind his best-selling In Cold Blood, Lee had decided to write her own true-crime book, and the Maxwell case promised to provide plenty of material. In this book, Cep tells both stories: of Maxwell, the crimes of which he was suspected, his own murder and the trial of his killer; and of Harper Lee and her failed attempt to turn the Maxwell story into a book.

Cep starts by describing the still racially divided area of Alabama in which Maxwell operated, a place of black poverty and strong religion. The son of a black sharecropper, Maxwell received only a basic education. He served in WW2, then when he came home he married and worked in various jobs but found it hard to keep them. He took to preaching and gained a following, but he was hardly a good man even then – he used his preaching as a way to find vulnerable women he could seduce. After twenty years of marriage, his wife, Mary Lou, was brutally murdered. The evidence pointed to Maxwell and he was duly indicted. Between the indictment and the trial, with the breathtaking hubris that he would show time and again, Maxwell claimed on the insurance policy he’d bought not long before Mary Lou’s death. Despite this, he was found not guilty. Over the next few years, several of his relatives would die suspicious deaths, and Maxwell would make many insurance claims, but somehow he continued to evade the law, until Robert Burns, a relative of the girl assumed to be his latest victim, took justice into his own hands.

As with all great true crime, Cep uses this basic story as a jumping-off point to look at various aspects of the society of the time. First she looks at the birth and growth of the insurance industry and how it became open to abuse by both buyers and sellers. Amazingly, it was perfectly legal for someone to take out a policy on the life of another person without that person’s agreement, or even knowledge. It gave me a real insight into why so many American crime novels and movies of the mid-twentieth century feature insurance as a motive, especially in noir.

One of the reasons Maxwell continued to evade justice was that often it wasn’t possible to determine the cause of the deaths associated with him. Everyone suspected him, everyone feared him, but no one could prove his guilt. This led to rumours that he was practising voodoo, and Cep uses this aspect to look at the history of voodoo in the South, referencing Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological efforts to record rituals and practices.

For years, Maxwell was represented by Tom Radney, a lawyer who not only defended him at trial but who assisted him with his insurance claims. Radney was a well known Democrat, and Cep goes into his biography in some depth too, expanding out to discuss the Wallace era in Alabama – segregation, white supremacy, etc. I found this very interesting, though I found it hard to reconcile the decent young liberal Tom Radney with the one who would assist Maxwell so enthusiastically a decade later. In an even more interesting twist, Radney would later defend Maxwell’s killer and become a friend of Harper Lee as she researched the case. A man of contradictions, and I’m not sure Cep managed to fully explain him.

In the second section of the book, Cep concentrates on Lee’s story, starting with a look at her childhood and student years, and her friendship with Capote. To be truthful, Lee came across to me as eminently unlikeable at this stage, rather arrogant and thinking she was above the common herd (which, of course, she was). Cep then goes into detail on the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird, including a discussion of how the book evolved from what we now know as Go Set a Watchman under the advice and guidance of her agent and publishers. Once the book was finished, there was a long wait until publication and it was during this period that Lee worked with Capote on the research for In Cold Blood. Cep gives her a lot of the credit for it, suggesting that it was she rather than Capote who was able to persuade the townspeople to open up to her.

Cep next talks about Lee’s life after Mockingbird. Burdened by success, grieving for her father and always complaining about punitive taxes, her friends and family worried about her mental state, and this would continue for most of her life. She wrote constantly but, never satisfied with her work, then destroyed the manuscripts. She drank to excess, often turning up drunk unexpectedly at friends’ houses. Then, after meeting Capote again and becoming acquainted with Tom Radney, she decided to try her hand at her own true-crime book.

Cep gives a brief but interesting account of the rise of true crime reportage in the US, from early pamphlets to the modern day. She discusses In Cold Blood and its impact in creating the “non-fiction novel”. She highlights the factual inaccuracies in In Cold Blood and reports some of the adverse reaction to it. She suggests that Lee was unpleasantly surprised by Capote’s fictionalising of the story, and that this fed into their growing coolness and separation. So when Lee decided to write her own book, she intended it to be true and based strictly on the facts.

Cep also highlights Lee’s continuing desire to write a book showing that white segregationists could still be good people but, as now, that view didn’t fit the liberal consensus and would have been unpublishable at the time. (This made me think for the first time that perhaps she actually was happy to see Watchman finally published, and changed my reluctance to read it into eagerness.) Cep then tells of Lee’s research into the Maxwell case and her long and ultimately failed attempt to bring it together into a coherent book.

The section on the Maxwell case is very good true-crime writing in its own right, but what makes this one stand out from the crowd is the association with Harper Lee. The whole section of analysis of Mockingbird and In Cold Blood is excellent, succinct and insightful. It’s not so much a literary analysis as an examination of the two authors’ creative processes, casting a lot of light on their personalities; all of which would be sure to make this book appeal to admirers of either of those works as well as anyone interested in true crime for its own sake. An excellent book – highly recommended.

(If you want to go for total immersion, my suggested reading order would be: first Mockingbird, then In Cold Blood, then this, then Watchman.)

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Random House Cornerstone.

This is my first sojourn into true crime and I found it interesting however the three sections that the book is divided into don’t quite gel together. This separateness made the sections feel almost like different books. Having said that the section on Harper Lee (which is why I was drawn to Furious Hours in the first place) was very informative.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

“Furious Hours” is a fascinating mixture of a book: true crime reporting about the murders of an alleged serial killer, the Reverend Willie Maxwell, his very own murder, his lawyer ‘s Big Tom Radney’s role in this Alabama drama and last but not least bibliographical reportage of Harper Lee’s life (the reclusive author of “To Kill a Mockingbird) unearthing the last known research activities for a book she saw but was unable to write after having spent years of research on Reverend Maxwell.

This book reads like a thriller but is also a portrait of Alabama, the South and a biography of Harper Lee’s peculiar life. I would say it is beneficial to have an interest in the author Harper Lee as 25 % of the book is about her, her research of this case and her plight to write a second bestseller after the gigantic success of “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

“Furious Hours” opens with the thriller element of the book. Several relatives including two wives of the African- American Reverend Maxwell are found dead, all having died under suspicious circumstances. Law enforcement treated Maxwell as a suspect but is unable to nail him to any of these deaths. What turned him into a key suspect is the fact that he had taken out life insurance on all these people unbeknownst to them, something that could be done years ago, making him the sole beneficiary in case of death. Reading about the investigations into these deaths, one is speechless that no one could pin Maxwell down to these murders despite him having more than one motive. Enter Tom Radney, his lawyer and a gregarious Alabama politician who defended him brilliantly in all these trials. When one of the grieving relatives takes justice into his own hands, Tom Radney switches roles without blinking an eye ending up defending Reverend Maxwell’s killer. These chapters alone make this book a mind boggling read.

I had read Marja Mills book “The Mockingbird Next Door” about her friendship with Harper Lee and her sisters a few years ago and was astonished to learn from Casey Cep that there had indeed been the start of a second book for Lee, not counting her original version of the Mockingbird, “Go Set a Watchman”, which was originally dropped but published after her death. Harper Lee dug deep and painstakingly into the Reverend Maxwell’s case, spending years of interviewing people associated with him and even living in Alexander City for some time to conduct her investigation. She amassed tons of material but after years of trying to write “The Reverend” as she called the work in progress, she gave up and the book never materialized.

Casey Cep has done some very extensive, deep digging herself to come up with this mesmerizing story. Hats off to her, I was absolutely fascinated by her discoveries and the stories she had to tell.

This book is a very odd combination it talks about Harper Lee and her life up to when she wrote ‘To Kill a Mockingbird ‘.
Then it moves onto Tom Rodney and his life.
Perhaps I misunderstood the blurb aa it was not what I was expecting at all.
Sadly it wasn’t a book that I enjoyed
Thank you to both NetGalley and Random House UK for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

The literacy life of Harper Lee has been a source of curiosity for many over the years since 'To Kill A Mockingbird' was first published. The young writer who produced this much read, much respected novel and who collaborated with Truman Capote on 'In Cold Blood' apparently retired from writing and published nothing else until 'Go Set a Watchman' , her first novel, was published so much later that her early work.

Furious Hours describes the setting and the research carried out by Nelle (Harper Lee) for her unpublished work, 'The Reverend' which seems very unlikely to see the light of day at any time. It describes the dubious life of William Maxwell, the insurance of the lives, and subsequent deaths in mysterious circumstances of members of his close family, his consequential murder, and the trial which took place as a result. It describes and makes alive the Alabama state of the time, the setting of Mockingbird, and it follows Lee as she tries so hard to write about it.

So we have a murder story woven around rich biographical detail of a passionate, brilliant, troubled writer, a woman who is very much to product of her Alabama childhood, who lived a writers life in New York. what emerges is a woman who is so devoted to the written word that it effectively cripples her ability to move forward without the support of her professional friends and her family.

This is such a fascinating insight and enhancement of the work of Harper Lee that it really is a must read for any fan of her work.

I loved the first half of this book and was all set to give it five stars - the life and trial of WIllie Maxwell was fascinating and so well written. I enjoyed the life of Harper Lee until she wrote Mockingbird and then - well, there was nothing but pages and pages about why she couldn't write anything else. The first half did live up to expectations, but the second half was a disappointing ramble.

Maybe I mis-read the blurb, but this book was not what I was expecting. Billed as 'the novel that Harper Lee couldn't write', I was expecting a novel similar to Mockingbird, but written by Cep. Indeed, Furious Hours does begin in this way, with a rather gripping account of a series of murders, with a backbone of the dubious trend for life insurance at the time. It began well.

However, the next part of this book was then devoted to a biographical account of Tom Radney, the defense attorney. This then abruptly ended, with the rest of the book devoted to the life of Harper Lee. I felt that this book really lacked identity - not really knowing if it was aiming to be non-fiction novel, biography or legal account.

There were two interesting elements in this book - the Reverend Willie Maxwell murders and the details if Harper Lee's life - but I personally don't believe that they belonged together in this one book. A good read if you want to know more about Harper Lee, but not if you want a thriller.

This is completely fascinating, covering the murder story that Harper Lee aimed to write about. Have travelled with Truman Capote as he wrote In Cold Blood, Lee clearly set out to do something similar for herself but didn't manage it in the end. This book covers both the tale of the murder, and the broader story of Lee's career and efforts. Really compelling reading.

After successfully receiving this book, I started to read about it. Until then, I had heard little - but my love of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and the appealing premise of the book drew me to it. However, the articles I read, the reviews and the interviews made 'Furious Hours' even more of an exciting reading experience - so I started reading!

Casey Cep sets out to investigate a lost book that Harper Lee was supposedly writing but never finished prior to her death three years ago. However, before this even became an idea in Lee's world, the initial story - of Reverend Maxwell - is even more interesting. The first part of the book focuses on Maxwell and the murders that he allegedly committed, from his first wife through to different members of his family. It's all quite perplexing why, even a good number of years ago, he got away with some heinous crimes. Regardless, Cep's early chapters deal with what happened and to whom, albeit in a very factual way, setting the scene for a mysterious amount of deaths in Alabama - and this, obviously, is a link to Lee, who was born and bred in the state, and 'Mockingbird', set in fictional Maycomb.

The book then continues to look at the life of Tom Radney, the lawyer appointed to Maxwell's murder trial. This shorter second section is, perhaps, less engaging than the first. However, it is necessary, given what Radney's job is but also what comes next - that, following Maxwell's murder at the funeral of Shirley-Ann, his latest victim, Radney takes on a different client - and so begins the next stage of the story.

'Furious Hours' largely focuses on Harper Lee - and the case of the Reverend that brought her back to her home state. It's extremely interesting in so many ways: Lee as a reclusive writer; her relationship with Truman Capote and the role she played in the writing of his 'In Cold Blood'; her years of research into the Reverend Maxwell case which didn't result in a finished product. It serves as a biography, of sorts, of Lee's life but also the lives of Alabamians and how life has changed but also, in some ways, stayed the same.

This is a captivating, want-to-read-more book and I am so pleased that Cep's exhaustive research has resulted in such a great read.

I have never come across anyone who didn’t love To Kill A Mockingbird. Equally, I have yet to meet someone who wasn’t slightly disappointed with Go Set a Watchman. After all those years of wanting more from Harper Lee her audience weren’t exactly infused with joy with her second release. Having said that, we all would probably have wanted more from Harper Lee.

In Casey Cep’s Furious Hours – Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee we get to see an inside picture of why we had to wait so long for Harper Lee’s work and more importantly how she struggled for decades to write something as good, as important as To Kill a Mockingbird.

Furious Hours is a good read. Casey Cep is a good writer. However, I do feel that Furious Hours could have been much shorter. There was an awful lot of background information given that had very little impact in the overall story of Harper Lee planning to write her novel on a crime that took place. A lot of it was irrelevant.

That being said, Furious Hours is an interesting read, it is well researched and the insight into Harper Lee’s life is fascinating. We finally get an impression of who this reclusive writer was.

Furious Hours – Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep is available now.

For more information regarding Casey Cep (@cncep) please visit her Twitter page.

For more information regarding Random House UK (@PenguinRHUK) please visit www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk.

My review: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Furious Hours by Casey Cep is a book of many tales, all of which tie up together, but knowing what's going on makes it so much more interesting!

The first is the life and trial of Reverend Willie Maxwell, who is accused of killing five family members for the multiple insurance policies he had on each of them.

The second is Maxwell's lawyer, Tom Radney, who goes on to defend Robert Burns, who murders Maxwell. Radney was a politician, and so was well versed in public speaking, persuading your listeners to your cause, which you can see in the courtroom.

The third is that of Harper Lee. We go through her life, and see her friendship with Truman Capot, it talks about why she only published two books in her lifetime. It also looks at how she went to the trial of Robert Burns, planning to write a book about it, in the same way that Truman Capote did in Cold Blood, for which Lee was his assistant.

This is Casey Cep's first book, but she has written articles before for the New Yorker, and others, and some of them have been about Harper Lee, and as Cep says on her website, she's loved Lee's work since she was a child.

I thought this was really well written, and has made me want to read both To Kill a Mockingbird again and Go Set a Watchman for the first time! If you like true crime, and learning a little more about such a reluctant celebrity, this is for you!

Furious Hours was published on 16th May 2019, and is available to buy on Amazon and on Waterstones. I've found a link to where you can search for local bookshops, including independent!

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Random House UK and Cornerstone (the publishers) for this book.

Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

Furious Hours is a truly engrossing documentary style book that brings three enthralling stories together around a series of incidents involving a serial killer. Each part includes the perspective of a renowned personality; Reverend Willie Maxwell (Serial Killer Preacher – Voodoo Preacher), Tom Radney (Lawyer) and Harper Lee (Author – To Kill a Mockingbird).

The structure of the book feels more like 3 shorter stories with a theme, rather than 3 integrated parts in the one story. Each part covers the biographical background of each character with great awareness and commentary. The research details are comprehensive and pursue threads to an extent that sometimes feel quite a distance from the connecting thread. This is especially true for the section detailing Nelle Harper Lee.

Part 1, focuses on Reverend Willie Maxwell, a preacher accused, but never convicted, of murdering 5 members of his family in order to benefit from life insurance policies he held on them. The narrative reads very visually, outlining the background, history, facts and supposition, all collated from witness accounts, law-enforcement records and background research. The comprehensive coverage creates a belief that various salient points are explored to their full conclusion. For example, the research into the history and operation of life insurance policies in the US is superbly detailed. The means by which Maxwell escaped prosecution and the autopsy finding on some of the deaths earned him the facade of a Voodoo Preacher.

Part 2, the lawyer, Tom Radney, represented Reverend Maxwell in the insurance claim pay-outs and investigations. After Maxwell was shot dead he represented Robert Burns, the man accused of shooting his former client. Radney was a very colourful character that seemed to have a propensity in defending minorities and difficult unsavoury cases. His background into politics and his ability to seduce an audience, particularly a jury, is fascinating. The dialogue and exchanges of courtroom drama are entertaining and cleverly drawn by Casey Cep.

The glamorous aspect of the story is that Harper Lee attended the court trial of Robert Burns with the intention of inspiring and generating ideas for the plot and theme of a new story. Her love of real crime, having written To Kill a Mockingbird and having worked with Truman Capote in the research for his book In Cold Blood was excited with this case. Part 3, covers in wonderful detail the biography of Nelle Harper Lee from her childhood with Truman Capote, up through her studies and writing career – before and after To Kill a Mockingbird. The struggles to finally deliver her masterpiece and the issues she faced following the fame, glory and financial success are presented in a very coherent and compelling manner.

The Harper Lee content consumes 50% of the book and a major friendship with Capote during many of those years shows two individuals that faced many internal demons. She reflects on her childhood friendship ending as;

“Truman did not cut me out of his life until after In Cold Blood was published. I never knew why he did it, the only comfort I had was in the discovery that he had done the same to several others, all faithful old friends. Our friendship, however, had been life-long, and I had assumed that the ties that bound us were unbreakable.”

I also found it quite fascinating that To Kill a Mockingbird came from the amalgamation of 2 shorter stories Go Set a Watchman and The Long Good-Bye. Interesting that her second novel was released in 2016, 67 years after her first and used the title Go Set a Watchman.

At times I wondered about the structure of the book and whether the parts were tenuously held together with a convenient thread, however, the reading of the material was fabulous with its insights and revelations. The research and its presentation were extensive and to read a factual account of events in a fictional style was impressive. Having jumped between 4 and 5 stars throughout the book the honest rating would be 4.5 stars.

The best non-fiction book I’ve read this year and I would highly recommend it. I’d like to thank Random House UK, Cornerstone and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC version in return for an honest review.

Cep details the history and geography of Alabama, local politics, and race relations while describing the case which drew Lee's interest; the bizarre yet true story of Reverend William Maxwell, who was linked to a number of suspicious deaths which ended with his own murder at the hands of a gunman in church during his niece's funeral. 

Casey Cep explores Lee's childhood and friendship with Capote, and Lee's contribution to In Cold Blood by conducting meticulous research and acting as a buffer between the outlandish Capote and the suspicious citizens of Alabama. She shows how this led to Lee's desire to write her own true crime novel. 

Cep illustrates Lee's lifelong dislike of the attention and celebrity that followed Mockingbird's reception and her steadfast elusiveness. Lee's trouble with alcohol, her struggle to get her second book down on paper, and the infirmity of her later years. 

Casey Cep's book roams widely, and it is testament to her conversational tone that I was willing to go wherever her narrative took me, whether it be the minutiae of life insurance policies or the practice of voodoo. The facts and issues are conveyed with a light touch and she brings all the main players to vivid life.
The perfect fusion of true crime with a consideration of what drove one of the most private writers. A great read!

To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most famous and well known novels of the last 100 years. It’s author, Harper Lee, was equally as infamous, largely for her reclusive nature and seeming reluctance to write a follow up book. Unbeknownst to many she was working on a true crime book which she eventually abandoned and for the first time, the full story of that book and Harper Lee’s abortive efforts is told here.

The book is split into three parts. The first part deals with the crime Harper Lee endeavoured to write about. Reverend Willie Maxwell was suspected of killing several of his family in order to claim the insurance money. There was virtually no insurance regulation at the time and people had figured out that you could buy insurance policies on other people and then cash them in if they should die. Maxwell was a keen user of this loophole, to such a degree that it was only a matter of time before someone took their revenge. Maxwell’s lawyer, Tom Radney was quite the flamboyant character too and the second section of the book tells the tale of his career and life. The final section details the long and ultimately doomed friendship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Lee’s help with Capote’s In True Blood was invaluable. She helped open door with the town’s population, kept derailed and accurate notes and helped him steer the story into a fully formed book. Lee’s aim was to repeat that success but, sadly her efforts never came to fruition.

This is a brilliant book. Every page is packed full of stories and tidbits. It’s like three books crammed into one and is an absolute wealth of knowledge for anyone with even a passing interest in the South, true crime, Truman Capote or Harper Lee. Casey Cep has done a fantastic job here, she’s pulled together a wealth of material and made it into a coherent and fascinating story. It’s one of those non fiction books that inspires you to immediately rush out and read five more books on similar subjects. It’s excellently written and so enjoyable to read, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair review.