The Rope

A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP

By: Alex Tresniowski

Narrated by: David Sadzin

From New York Times bestselling author Alex Tresniowski comes a “compelling” (The Guardian) and “riveting” (The New York Times Book Review) true-crime thriller recounting the 1910 murder of ten-year-old Marie Smith, the dawn of modern criminal detection, and the launch of the NAACP.

In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time.

Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly-covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces—religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics, and America’s Jim Crow racial violence.

History and true crime collide in this “compelling and timely” (Vanity Fair) murder mystery featuring characters as complex and colorful as those found in the best psychological thrillers—the unconventional truth-seeking detective Ray Schindler; the sinister pedophile Frank Heidemann; the ambitious Asbury Park Sheriff Clarence Hetrick; the mysterious “sting artist,” Carl Neumeister; the indomitable crusader Ida Wells; and the victim, Marie Smith, who represented all the innocent and vulnerable children living in turn-of-the-century America.

“Brisk and cinematic” (The Wall Street Journal), The Rope is an important piece of history that gives a voice to the voiceless and resurrects a long-forgotten true crime story that speaks to the very divisions tearing at the nation’s fabric today.

History no longer forgotten...

An outstanding book that reads like a detective story, while giving the reader a factual history lesson in racial injustice. I highly recommend it. The Audible version is compelling.

INCREDIBLE

This book has been on my TBR shelf for quite a while. I have enjoyed it. It has provided me with information I had not before heard or known. Ida B. Wells is a prominent figure in the second part of the book. I learned a lot about her.


RECOMMENDATION: READ IT

Text

Sorry, but I felt this was much like required reading torn from the syllabus of a course I no longer enjoyed; much like a text book & it unfortunately bounced awkwardly through time and narrative