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

by Casey Cep

Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx,

Herman Me...

identifiable only to the author, her sister, and the subject.”

Isn't this backwards? Lee is the subject.

Essex

What an absolutely fabulous name. Even better than Lawson.

Lee drew a horseshoe on the back flap of the envelope as a kind of homemade return address.

“but he had a profound and abiding belief in insurance.”

one thousand dollars

JEEZ.US. ❗❗

More disturbingly, it raised questions about whether Ophelia might have been the one to fulfill the role the Reverend had initially offered to the man from Eclectic.

she was concerned about threats to herself, her family in Alex City, and her older sister over in Eufaula.

She had always loved mysteries, and this one, dark as it was, was combating her own darkness.

Weird how that works. #murderino

equal parts Pliny the Elder and Thucydides.

Not sure I understand the comparison.

rumpus room

433 East Eighty-Second Street,

For a while, she shared the first floor with two musicians, known then as Daryl and John but soon to become famous by their last names: Hall & Oates, who had no idea their neighbor was a novelist, much less Harper Lee.

OMFG!?!? Say WHAT?!?! 😱😮❗❗

poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, and Thomas Hardy,

Mary McCarthy, John Updike, Peter De Vries, John Cheever, and Flannery O’Connor—plus

Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Richard Hughes’s High Wind in Jama...

but it wasn’t entirely clear how best to divide the Maxwell case up into its many parts.

I think this author did a pretty good job of it.

he was first and foremost representing himself.

Hmmm. What exactly does that mean?

if a hero is what you want, invent one.”

Again, ???

History isn’t what happened but what gets written down,

the archival record generally overlooked the lives of poor black southerners.

That was in keeping with the way black lives in the South and elsewhere had been

treated—not merely criminalized but criminally neglected,

To Kill a Mockingbird had come into being through the extensive editorial direction of Tay Hohoff.

I remember that disaster of a self-edited book on the topic of obituaries.

Gothic Revivals, Greek Revivals, classical revivals,

Between the refuge, the reservoir, and all of the historic buildings, Eufaula was, according to Harper Lee, “the loveliest town in the state.”

Collette’s husband.”

??

Lee mostly shied away from other writers,

Gregory Peck wasn't a writer...

Carson McCullers, whom she barely knew and who resented her for “poaching on my literary preserves”; Flannery O’Connor, whom she never knew and who belittled Mockingbird as “a child’s book”; and Eudora Welty, whom she adored but would later learn regarded her as a one-hit wonder.

JEEZ.US. Jealous much? WHYYYY can't woman uplift each other?? Such immature cattiness.

“Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Gore Vidal,

return angrily to parties she’d been asked to leave to plead for just one more drink.

Yikes. Reminds me a bit of Mank. Hopefully she never puked on the rug.

Isabelle Holland,

Henry James

Bulwer-Lytton,”

Interesting fella

James Adair,

Another interesting character

she returned his call but trailed off into a sad silence, saying, “My old friend…”

On my god, just heartbreaking.

William Styron,

Joseph Fox,

??

Zoe Ca...

“A Christmas Memory,”

Monroeville. His words rang the courthouse bell, cracked pecan shells, and made the theater smell of hominy and honey.

Antabuse

Answered Prayers

Season of the Strangler,

“not interested in buying information or entering into a financial transaction with anybody,”

Presumptious, no? When did her mention any payment?

that there is no cassette tape long enough to measure

Wonder what was meant by that... People agree interviewed embellishing maybe?

human vanity.

Walker Evans,