Southern Lies and Homicides: Tales of Betrayal and Murder - Paperback

by Susan Waller Lehmann (Author)

This compelling collection of stories by private investigator and award-winning author Susan Waller Lehmann takes readers on her personal journey of casework in the South, from her first process service through domestic situations, to capital murder cases, to the execution of her favorite client.

After an unexpected relocation to rural Alabama, Susan decided to become a private investigator. Using skills honed as a journalist, she landed a job with an agency. Situations arose and she soon set out on her own.

These stories impart universal truths about working as a female PI on emotionally charged and volatile civil and criminal cases. In a deeply conservative society where lies are told and winning matters more than truth, justice is bought and favors the few.

Praise for Southern Lies and Homicides

Whatever you think you know about private investigators, forget it. Susan Lehmann tells you what it's really like to be one. It can be dangerous and heart breaking. Susan brings the injustice of our legal system to light as she deftly leads readers into realms unimaginable to most. Southern Lies and Homicides is comprised of finely told stories of deception, of unforgettable plots and characters, of a fractured legal system and its victims.
-Larry Schnell, Author, Reporter, Journalism Instructor

Susan 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. 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.
-Steve Watkins, Award-winning author.

This was an engaging trip into the world of a private investigator, not just any PI, but one very particular PI, the author Susan Lehmann. While Susan and I spent countless hours together in rural Alabama doing death penalty mitigation field work, much of her story was new to me. The stories in Southern Lies and Homicides shine a light on the work and the people, the tribulations and surprises and gifts. But in these stories also witnessed Susan's personal journey through events that made her swear and rant and laugh-and the things that battered her heart. Her very big heart.
This book is a powerful and deeply personal journey through the world of criminal defense investigation and mitigation, as experienced firsthand by the author. Set against the backdrop of the South-primarily Alabama and Georgia-these stories delve into the lives of death row convicts and individuals caught in private crises. With unflinching honesty and compassion, the author brings to light the humanity behind these often-overlooked lives.
-Krista Bentley, Creative Strategist at Paddles & Paragraphs

Susan Lehmann's collection of in-the-field case stories is an entertaining and candid peek behind the curtain at the real work of private investigations. With a former journalist's storytelling instincts and a detective's eye for the perfect, telling detail, Lehmann offers a fascinating highlights reel of her investigative life, describing the daily tediums, human dramas, case-breaking discoveries, and alarming confrontations that make up a PI career. Interspersed with thrilling action sequences are flashes of empathy and insight, as Lehmann illuminates the complicated human lives at the heart of her cases. Southern Lies and Homicides is part memoir and part field guide to process service, surveillance, and mitigation investigations. It's an essential read for rookie PIs, anyone considering this profession, or spy-curious civilians.
-Kim Green, Managing Editor, Pursuit Ma