Just Released
"The Past Is Never Dead" 
The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi’s Struggle for Redemption

From Basic Civitas, a Member of the Perseus Books Group, for more information go to www.perseusbooksgroup.com

From Edgar Award Winner
Harry N. MacLean

In 1964, at the beginning of a hot Mississippi summer, Klansman James Ford Seale was involved in the kidnapping and murder of two young black men. He and fellow Klansmen chained the youths to iron weights and dumped them alive into the Mississippi River. Not until January 2007 was Seale finally brought to justice, in what might be called the ultimate cold case.

In The Past Is Never Dead bestselling author Harry MacLean follows the twists and turns of a trial that took forty-three years to come to pass. Through the unfolding drama we see past the stereotypes about Mississippi, finding a culture far different from, and in many ways better than, its endemic racism and bloody history would suggest.

At the heart of The Past Is Never Dead is a gripping legal battle over Seale’s fate, putting to the test Mississippi’s struggle for redemption, and questioning whether it is indeed ever possible to overcome the past.

"Even decades after the Civil Rights Movement wrought real change throughout the United States, Mississippi remains ground zero for what can be called the ongoing drama of racial inequality. This is the ground Harry Maclean walks in this fierce, moving, and tremendously engaging book."

25th Anniversary Edition
Includes a complete update from the author with new information 
on the killing and the investigation.

"In Broad Daylight"

Edgar Award Winner
Harry N. MacLean

For twenty years, Ken Rex McElroy terrorized the citizens of northwest Missouri without conscience or remorse. On July 10, 1981, McElroy was shot to death on the main street of the small town of Skidmore, as he sat in his pick-up. Forty-five people watched, yet no one was ever indicted for the murder.

Harry MacLean won an Edgar Award for In Broad Daylight, first published in 1989. The book tells the story of McElroy’s reign of terror, the murder itself, and the town’s conspiracy of silence as to the identity of the killers. The book was reissued in 2007 with an epilogue containing new information on the killing and the investigation.

“Gripping…excellent and disturbing…a fine and richly rewarding book.”