‘It’s been a long time since I picked up a book so impossible to put down. ifurious hours/made me forget dinner, ignore incoming calls and stay up reading into the small hours. It’s a work of literary and legal detection as gripping as a thriller. but it’s also a meditation on motive and mystery, the curious workings of history, hope and ambition, justice and the darkest matters of life and death. Casey cep’s investigation into an infamous southern murder trial and Harper Lee’s quest to write about it is a beautiful, sobering and sometimes chilling triumph.’ Helen MacDonald, author of h is for Hawk ‘A triumph on every level./one of the losses to literature is that Harper Lee never found a way to tell a Gothic true-crime story she’d spent years researching. Casey cep has excavated this mesmerising story and tells it with grace and insight and a fierce fidelity to the truth.’ David Grann, author of killers of the flower moon The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after to kill a Mockingbird reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for Insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead 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. As Alabama is consumed by these gripping events, it’s not long until news of the case reaches Alabama's – and American – most famous writer. Intrigued by the story, Harper Lee makes a journey back to her home state to witness the reverend’s killer face trial. Harper had the idea of writing her own in cold blood, The true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research. Lee spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more years trying to finish the book she called the Reverend. now Casey cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success and the mystery of artistic creativity. This is the story Harper Lee wanted to write. This is the story of why she couldn't.