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

At the heart of Furious Hours are stories about the deaths of African Americans, including those of Willie Maxwell and his victims. How Cep tells these stories is shaped by the demands of her genres as well as the history of the representation of black death and suffering for profit, entertainment, and instruction.

Furious Hours reflects some of the conventions of true crime, a genre that generally focuses on the graphic details of crimes such as murder, the process of pursuing the perpetrator, and the trial that brings the perpetrator to justice. Cep includes a substantial history of true crime in Chapter 20, indicating her deep knowledge of the genre. Given this knowledge, one can assume Cep’s decisions to engage with and depart from those conventions are meaningful.

As expected for a book that focuses on true crime, Furious Hours includes clinical descriptions of the corpses of Willie’s victims as well as details like the fact that Willie attempted to wipe his forehead before expiring after Robert Burns shot him. These descriptions serve to make the brutality of the crimes obvious. With the exception of Willie’s murder—more akin to an execution—Cep chooses not to represent the murders directly or to reconstruct them in any great detail, however.