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Adaptation “Buried” Now Playing!

MacLean is a narrator in the series and is credited as a consultant for the show.

NY Times Notable Book of the Year

Listen to Harry on the recent NPR podcast Criminal discuss how Ken McElroy terrorized Skidmore, Mo., for decades before the town fought back. The story behind In Broad Daylight continues to titillate.

The book and the series are based on the story of Eileen Franklin, who claimed to recover a repressed memory of her father murdering her playmate twenty years earlier. George Franklin was tried and convicted of first degree murder based solely on her “recovered memory.” His conviction was later reversed, but the trial set off a firestorm of controversy about the relationship between trauma and memory.

This version contains a 2011 Epilogue, which details the reasons for the reversal of George Franklin’s conviction and the refusal of the district attorney to retry him for murder.

“IMPORTANT. . . RELENTLESS. . . A many-faceted and accomplished study. . . MacLean has taken a gruesome story and retold it with considerable sensitivity. . . ”

The New York Times

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New Story In the Works: Starkweather and Fugate – Read Article


The Joy of Killing

The Joy of Killing

This literary thriller, MacLean’s first work of fiction, is being hailed as an “exciting combination of love story, mystery, psychological suspense and meditation on human nature and the origins of violence.” Counterpoint is presenting The Joy of Killing as its lead title in July and is arranging for nationwide publicity. The press release describes the book as “reminiscent of the work of noir master Derek Raymond and John Banville’s The Sea with a touch of David Lynch.”

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In Broad Daylight

The story of Ken Rex McElroy, who was an illiterate hog farmer who lived on the outskirts of a small town in Northwest Missouri. For over twenty years he raped, robbed and burned almost at will. One day, Ken McElroy was shot to death on the main street of Skidmore in July 1981, in front of 45 witnesses. Despite three grand juries, no one has been indicted for the killing.

“Gripping…excellent and disturbing…a fine and richly rewarding book.”
Tom Andes, The Washington Post Book World

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The Past is Never Dead

The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption

In 2007 James Ford Seale was indicted for the murder of two black youths in southwest Mississippi in 2007. This book covers the trial and conviction of Seale for the crimes, and explores the ongoing attempt of Mississippi to atone for its bloody racial past and the possibility of redemption through the prosecution of former Klansman for crimes of the sixties. This books was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize, offered by Stanford University.

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The Story Behind ‘In Broad Daylight’

The Story Behind the Story

Tells the story of how MacLean came to write his Edgar Award-winning book in this true crime short. This book brings the story up to date and includes several previously unpublished pictures. MacLean discusses the nature of the moral consequences of the killing for the town and those involved in the killing. He also describes the breakthrough events when key characters agreed to speak with him, and he realized he would finally get the story.

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