Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town

This classic tale of murder and injustice in a small Alabama town has a great cast of characters: a sweet-faced and popular teenaged girl, some bumbling but well-meaning homicide detectives, another teenaged girl who's considered "trailer trash," her identical twin aunts who have bulldog tenacity, a ditzy white woman who likes her weed and her black boyfriends, a racist good-ol'-boy sheriff, a wily raconteur of a con man, three black lawyers with impeccable credentials in civil rights activism, and the stars of the story, a wronged black man and his long-suffering wife. Circumstantial Evidence is an entertaining mystery as well: If you pay close attention, you may guess the solution. As the New York Times writes, "Without preaching, Mr. Earley shows how subtle and overt racism conspired to condemn a man while giving lip service to the legal system's supposed objectivity." Circumstantial Evidence won the 1996 Edgar Award for best fact crime.