Author: Joshua Sharpe
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 272 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (GA)
Summary: The riveting story of a 1985 double murder, a long-overdue investigation, and the fight to exonerate an innocent man.
In 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area’s Black community. The killer vanished into the night. For fifteen years, the case remained unsolved. Then authorities zeroed in on Dennis Perry, a carpenter who grew up nearby. Convicted with devastatingly flawed evidence, Perry received a double life sentence.
When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of corruption, devastating missteps, and secrets. Driven by the pursuit of the truth, Sharpe’s investigation takes him through dusty courthouse archives, down winding dirt roads, and into intense interviews. But he keeps knocking on doors―even after they’re slammed in his face. Sharpe uncovers explosive evidence that helps prove Dennis Perry’s innocence. And he confronts a long-ignored suspect: an alleged white supremacist who had bragged about committing the murders.
But the fight for the truth is not easily won. When a key figure in the investigation turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Sharpe’s sources and editors insist that he could be in danger. And even as evidence mounts of Perry’s innocence, local officials work to keep him in prison―until Sharpe’s reporting forces the state to launch a new investigation―thirty-five years after the Swains’ murders. Driven by Sharpe’s tireless reporting, The Man No One Believed tells the unbelievable story of one of the most confounding cases in Georgia history, the extraordinary fight to free an innocent man, and how state officials worked against the odds to deliver justice for the Swains after all.
Review: I have been lax on my nonfiction reading so when this one appeared on the Book of the Month List, I jumped at the chance to get a copy. I am really glad that I read this one. True Crime, Innocence Project, good journalistic writing. What more could I want?!
This book is really well done from the writing, the explanation of the events, the "b-role" to give the reader a broader picture of the place and people, to the intrigue of the story itself. What a crazy murder case! There were so many possible suspects, lots of lying (on the part of witnesses, suspects, judges, and sheriff's office staff). How does anyone get justice in a small town like that?!
Obviously, they don't. The wrong many was in jail for many years until DNA testing became a thing and the bad apples in charge were kicked out. So many people had to work for decades to ensure that the innocent were freed and the guilty were caught. I am sure there are many, many cases like this one.
Challenges for which this counts:
- 20 Books of Summer
- Book Cover Love: A design that is in desperate need of a makeover
- Nonfiction: no category
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