In Matthew Guinn's The Scribe, follows detective Thomas Canby is called back to the city on the eve of Atlanta's 1881 International Cotton Exposition to partner with Atlanta's first African American police officer, Cyrus Underwood. The case they're assigned is chilling: a serial murderer who seems to be violently targeting Atlanta's wealthiest black entrepreneurs. The killer's method is both strange and unusually gruesome. On each victim's mutilated body is inscribed a letter of the alphabet, beginning with "M." The oligarchy of Atlanta's most prominent white businessmen―the same men who ran Canby out of town, known more openly before Reconstruction as "the Ring"―is anxious to solve the murders before they lose the money they've invested in both the exposition and the city's industrialization, even if resolution comes at the expense of justice. Guinn will be in the store for a reading and signing.
Matthew Guinn, formerly an instructor of English at the University of Mississippi, has published articles on southern literature in "Southern Quarterly", "South Atlantic Review", and "Resources for American Literary Study".
