About this item
Soon to be a Showtime documentary, Murder in the Bayou is a New York Times bestselling chronicle of a high-stakes investigation into the murders of eight women in a troubled Southern parish that is "part murder case, part corruption expos, and part Louisiana noir" (New York magazine) . Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered in Jennings, Louisiana, a bayou town of 10,000 in the Jefferson Davis parish. The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, stirring a wave of panic across Jennings' class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society's most vulnerable - impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted What had the eight women known And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each woman's final hours delivering a true crime tale that is "mesmerizing" (Rolling Stone) and "explosive" (Huffington Post) . "Brown is a man on a mission...he gives the victims more respectful attention than they probably got in real life" (The New York Times) . "A must-read for true-crime fans" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) , with a new afterword, Murder in the Bayou is the story of an American town buckling under the dark forces of poverty, race, and class division - and a lightning rod for justice for the daughters it lost.
About the Author
Ethan Brown is a New Orleans-based author and criminal defense investigator who has written four investigative-reporting driven books on crime and criminal justice policy:
His first book - Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler - was published by Random House in 2005 to rave reviews in the Boston Globe ("diligently researched and trenchantly observed ... a fascinating look at the way one generation's reality becomes the next's mythology") , The Village Voice ("one of the first reliable accounts [of the crack era] ... the fact that Brown was able to publish so thorough an account is itself notable") and Publishers Weekly ("A vigorous account of an American subculture that's colorful, influential and, given the body count, tragic") .
Ethan's second book - Snitch: Informers, Cooperators and the Corruption of Justice - was published by Public Affairs in 2007. The Legal Times wrote of Snitch that "Many police and prosecutors reading his book (or this review) will surely cry foul. Their cries will too often be proven insincere upon close examination, however, because Brown's evidence ... is overwhelming." Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury praised Snitch as "must reading for anyone concerned about the future of 'law and order' in America." Manhattan Institute Scholar John McWhorter called Snitch one of the "strongest, smartest" books about race in the past decade.
Ethan's third book - Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New Orleans - was published by Henry Holt in the fall of 2009. Evan Wright, author of the New York Times bestseller Generation Kill, called Shake the Devil Off "a chilling portrait of a broken hero failed by the system." George Pelecanos, New York Times bestselling author of The Turnaround, said that "Ethan Brown examines a notorious murder case, rescues it from the talons of tabloid journalists, and comes up with something much more than a true crime book. Shake the Devil Off is a gripping suspense story, an indictment of the military's treatment of our soldiers in and out of war, and a celebration of the resilience and worth of a great American city." In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called Shake the Devil Off "heartbreaking" and Nate Blakeslee, author of Tulia, hailed the book as "a 'coming home' story that rivals any written about veterans of the war in Iraq, and a true crime account that raises the bar for the genre. Measured, thoroughly reported, and written with true empathy." David Simon, creator of The Wire and author of Homicide and The Corner, said that "looking more deeply at that from which the rest of us turned in horror, Ethan Brown has transformed an ugly and disturbing shard of the post-Katrina anguish. In this book, that which was lurid and sensation
