Miscarriage of Justice

Title: MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE
Author: Kip Gayden
Publisher: Center Street
February 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59995-687-9
Genre: True Crime/historical

March 16, 1913, started out as a day quite normal. Until the police get a phone call about a murder down at a Nashville, Tennessee, barber shop. When the police arrive, they find the murderer still at the scene, but it’s the story behind it, and what happens at the trial that will change lives. The only thing more surprising than the crime, is the verdict.

Anna fell in love with Walter Dotson when she was just sixteen years old, attending a church camp. Walter was beyond reproach, but both of them remembered the other. When Walter went to serve his residency at a hospital, he chose the community where Anna lived, hoping he’d be able to look her up. Anna was one step ahead of Walter, and knowing he was a future doctor, she already arranged to be in the hospital doing volunteer work, hoping that Walter would choose to go there.

Walter and Anna marry and have children and everything is picture perfect until Walter’s profession starts demanding more time, and Anna meets Charlie Cobb. Charlie befriends Walter, but he’s interested in Anna. The consequences are deadly.

I wasn’t real impressed with MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE at first. The story is mostly told, and the reader is kept at arm’s length, never really connecting with the characters. And the sex scenes were a bit more graphic than I appreciate. But in spite of the fact that I couldn’t get into the story, I couldn’t put the book down. I had to find out what happened with Anna and Walter, who killed who, and why and what the verdict would be.

The story is spellbinding, and since it is a fictionalized account of a true story, it is fascinating in that way. Truly a powerful story. $22.99 hardcover. 327 pages.