About this item
Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered around the town of Jennings, in Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana. They had all engaged in sex work as a means of survival, and they came to be called the Jeff Davis 8. The investigations into their deaths, originally searching for a serial killer, raised questions about police misconduct and corruption.
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
