Good evening.

This is Inside the Cover.

And I am your host, Ted Ayres.

On a recent show I referenced Furious Hours by Casey Cep and told you that I loved the book.

I also noted that I plan to devote a whole show to this book at a later date.

Well, guess what?

It is now a later date and it is now time to go inside the cover.

Casey Cep is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review and The New Republic.

She was born and raised on the eastern shore of Maryland, and she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in English.

Ms. Cep attended the University of Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, earning a master of philosophy in theology.

After internships at the New Republic and other publications, she became a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Furious Hours is her first book, and it was published by Knopf in May of 2019.

This book revolves around the lives of three distinct and disparate people who Cep has definitely brought together in this riveting story.

The book is subtitled Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.

And this is certainly an accurate descriptor.

It is divided into three sections.

The reverend, the lawyer and the writer.

The reverend is Willie Maxwell of Coosa County, Alabama.

Thanks to Alabama's vibrant revival culture, one in four Alabamans were Baptist.

Reverend Maxwell was a fire and brimstone sort of preacher who kept having wives and family members die and by the way, these individuals were heavily insured with Reverend Maxwell as a beneficiary.

Often referred to as the voodoo preacher, Maxwell was shot by a relative while sitting in a pew at a church service in front of the congregation.

The lawyer was Tom Radney, a lawyer inspired by the magic of John F Kennedys Camelot.

Before he became famous or infamous as Reverend Maxwell's lawyer, Tom Radney was already well known in Alabama for taking on another almost impossible cause: liberal politics in the Deep South.

Not only did Tom Radney defend Maxwell against criminal charges relating to the various deaths of his wives and others, he also assisted Maxwell in his various lawsuits against dubious and recalcitrant life insurance companies.

Tom Radney also defended the man accused of murdering Maxwell in cold blood.

Of course, the writer was Harper Lee.

Lee had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with 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 working on this book, attending a trial in Alexander City, talking to family members, gathering information.

Nell Harper Lee died in the early morning hours of February 19, 2016, at the age of 89.

She died in an assisted living facility only a few streets away from the home on South Alabama Avenue, where she had learned to read and write.

Her book on the reverend was never completed.

In addition to being engaged and entertained, I learned so much from Ceps book.

Let me offer a few random examples.

Lee's older sister, Alice, practiced law in the family law firm Barnett, Bugg and Lee into her triple digits.

Six weeks shy of graduation, Harper Lee dropped out of the University of Alabama School of Law.

Truman Capote paid Lee $900 to accompany him to Holcomb, Kansas, to help research his book on the Clutter Family Murders.

And everyone in Kansas was charmed by Harper Lee.

Not so much Capote.

Tonight's book has been Furious Hours by Casey Cep.

I found it to be a wonderful book and I recommend it without hesitation or reservation.

I agree with President Obama.

This book will be on my top ten list for 2023.

Goodnight and see you next time.