Furious Hours, Casey Cep
Cep's true-crime narrative is the perfect combination of author biography and murder mystery that you never knew you wanted. A staff writer at The New Yorker, Cep unravels the story behind the unwritten book that plagued Harper Lee to the end of her life. The work is split into three sections, each dedicated to a different player in the story: the reverend (who murdered loved ones to claim their life insurance money), the lawyer (who defended the reverend and then the man who killed the killer), and Harper Lee (who becomes a character herself in the tale of the murder investigation). While Lee's extensive notes aided Cep's journalistic account, Cep's own passionate and lyrical writing kept me breathless until the very last sentence.