This week’s Bookshelf is on three new books about murder and mayhem. Two are nonfiction and one is fiction, and none of them are for the faint of heart.
Lead us not into temptation: “Sex, God and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida” is the subtitle of Mikita Brottman’s latest true crime book, “Guilty Creatures” (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 28.99). With a title like that, the bar for salaciousness is set high, and she delivers. But at the core of this gripping saga is a brutal, coldblooded killing of an innocent man that leaves the reader heartsick in the end.
Mike and Denise Williams and Brian and Kathy Winchester were close friends as teenagers attending North Florida Christian High School. Raised in strict, religious homes, the foursome was clean-cut and wholesome. The boys played on the football team and the girls cheered them on. They spent weekends together, hunting, fishing, bowling and dining out.
But after they married, something changed. The foursome began drinking heavily, experimenting with drugs and going to strip clubs. Mike and Kathy eventually grew tired of the rowdy life, but Brian and Denise were just getting started. Before long, they were having an affair and engaging in increasingly risky behavior.
Then one morning in December 2000, Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After 44 days, the search was called off and authorities suspected “alligator involvement.” But after Denise collected $1 million in life insurance and Brian divorced Kathy to marry Denise, suspicions were aroused.
As a psychoanalyst, Brottman brings a lot of scrutiny to the motivations and psychology behind the killers’ actions that reveal just how low some people can really go.
Fall of a Southern dynasty. Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein delivers the definitive book on the Alex Murdaugh murders with “The Devil at His Elbow” (Ballantine Books, $32). Based on interviews with more than 200 sources plus hospital records, court documents, depositions, newspaper archives and her daily attendance of Murdaugh’s six-week trial, Bauerlein offers a comprehensive examination of the history of the Murdaugh legacy and its spectacularly tragic end.
“By the time the trial was over, Alex Murdaugh had revealed himself as a hollow man, capable not just of annihilating his wife and son but of trying to pin the murders on others, defrauding his most vulnerable clients, betraying his law partners and his closest friends, deceiving even his family about almost every aspect of his life,” writes Bauerlein. “The question that confounded so many was exactly how such a prosperous and respected citizen had come to lay ruin to the lives of everyone around him.”
I don’t think there will ever be a definitive answer to that question, but pondering it never fails to captivate the imagination.
Happy pub day: Publishing Aug. 6, Atlanta author Mickey Dubrow’s latest independent novel “Bulletproof” (Market Street Bridge Press, $17.99) is a shocking and satirical take on gun violence in America. After Nell Slagle’s brother kills 25 people in a Tennessee middle school, wounding her in the process, she finds herself ostracized by society, homeless and addicted to heroin. But things turn around when a defense contractor enlists her as a volunteer in an experiment that renders her bulletproof. With her new super power, she decides to dole out retribution for the proliferation of gun violence in the U.S. by becoming a mass shooter at gun shows.
A Cappella Books presents Dubrow in conversation with Andisheh Nouraee, co-author and illustrator of “Americapedia: Taking the Dumb Out of Freedom,” Aug. 6 at The Lounge at Wild Heaven West End. For details go to acappellabooks.com
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.
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