Reviews

Susan Waller Lehmann is that rarest of private investigators, and storytellers—one driven by curiosity and dedication and a powerful, perhaps nameless compulsion to dig as deeply as necessary, peeling away layer after layer, through complication after complication, to get at something like the truth—no matter how painful in the end. From her start in the business as a Sue Grafton-reading PI wannabe, to her years-long work on complex cases as a death-penalty mitigation specialist, Lehmann has maintained not only her investigative tenacity, and the skills to match, but also her deep and abiding sense of humanity, all of which she explores in this must- read collection of true tales of her lifetime in the business. As compelling as it is, the title of Lehmann’s book—Southern Lies and Homicides: Tales of Betrayal and Murder—barely scratches the surface of her deep dives into dark underworlds the rest of us are reluctant to openly acknowledge, but that we fear are there nonetheless, eroding the tenuous foundations of our lives. Lehmann’s memoir reads at times like the best PI procedurals, and at times like a literary genre of her own making—a meditation on family, and caring, and fear, and loss, and what can be salvaged from all the lost souls among us—including, at times, our own.