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

Interesting read, lots of history.

I was a little confused when I started reading the book. I expected it to talk about the case that Harper Lee was trying to write about but mostly focus on her, and the beginning of the book solely focuses on the case of "Reverend" Willie Maxwell and how he repeatedly got away with murder, until he didn't. Interesting enough, but I kept wondering, where the hell is Harper Lee?? It very slowly dawned on me that the author had separated the book into sections, first dealing with the case and writing the story that Harper Lee never finished, then fleshing out some of the local characters, then focusing on Lee herself. Of course I could enjoy it because I'm all about the salacious true crime stories, but I'm not totally sure the premise here worked. Seems the author was trying to find a way to get "permission" to write the story that Lee never did, then use her name as a pull to get readers interested.
(Still fascinating to me, as Maxwell was able to take out life insurance policies on anyone and everyone he knew, pretty much, and then, COMPLETELY COINCIDENTALLY, they die under bizarre and puzzling circumstances. And I was reading this while we were on our big giant cross-country road trip where we were also listening to a podcast ("The Clearing") about a serial killer in Ohio (and elsewhere) who took out a life insurance policy on at least one of his victims.)

I learned a lot! A lot about Lake Martin, life insurance, Alabama politics, the voodoo reverend, and especially Nelle Harper Lee!