Carolina Skeletons: A Novel Based on the Execution of America's Youngest Murderer - Hardcover

Stout, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 089296264X ISBN 13: 9780892962648

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1988

Synopsis

Forty-four years after the fact, James Willop heads for South Carolina to determine if his uncle, fourteen in 1944, committed the murder of two small white girls for which he was executed

About this title

About the Author:

David Stout is an accomplished reporter who has been writing mysteries and true crime since the 1980s. Born in Pennsylvania, Stout took a job at The New York Times in 1982, where he began writing his first novel, Carolina Skeletons, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

When two young white girls are killed in the small South Carolina town of Alcolu in 1944, the hunt for their murderer turns almost immediately to the flimsy shacks that house the "colored" mill workers. Based on an actual event, this novel faithfully renders its place and time. The thick Southern heat, and the absolute, unequal balance between whites who mark the social boundary lines and blacks who stay within them in order to survive, make it possible to believe that the few words spoken by Linus Bragg, the scared-silent, 14-year-old black boy who is executed for the crime, could be fatally twisted to mean more than the child who spoke them had ever intended. Forty-four years later, James Willop, an unemployed New Jersey newsman, goes to Alcolu to dig for the truth behind his Uncle Linus's death. He finds the town superficially changed, but when two more murders occur Willop has reason to fear that the same deadly racist tensions running beneath the surface could drag him under as well. Stout, an editor at the New York Times, has produced an accomplished, sadly evocative novel, only slightly marred by loose ends and a somewhat blustery tone in its second half.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 089296264X
• ISBN 13: 9780892962648
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296