Tangled Vines
Power, Privilege, and the Murdaugh Family Murders
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4.0 • 64 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
2024 EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST FACT CRIME NOVEL
In Tangled Vines, bestselling true crime author John Glatt reconstructs the rise of the prestigious Murdaugh family and the shocking double murder that led to the downfall of its patriarch, Alex Murdaugh.
Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power. A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity—but it was an unimaginable tragedy that would thrust them into the national spotlight. On June 7th, 2021, prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh discovered the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the grounds of their thousand-acre hunting lodge. The mystery deepened only months later when Alex himself was discovered shot in the head on a local roadside.
But as authorities scrambled for clues and the community reeled from the loss and media attention, dark secrets about this Southern legal dynasty came to light. The Murdaughs, it turned out, were feared as much as they were loved. And they wouldn’t hesitate to wield their influence to protect one of their own; two years before he was killed, a highly intoxicated Paul Murdaugh was at the helm of a boat when it crashed and killed a teenage girl, and his light treatment by police led to speculation that privilege had come into play. As bombshells of financial fraud were revealed and more suspicious deaths were linked to the Murdaughs, a new portrait of Alex Murdaugh emerged: a desperate man on the brink of ruin who would do anything, even plan his own death, to save his family’s reputation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Glatt (The Doomsday Mother) tells the stranger-than-fiction saga of South Carolina's Murdaugh family in this exemplary work of true crime. While many readers will be familiar with the allegations that attorney Alex Murdaugh killed his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, in 2021—resulting in his 2023 conviction and double life sentence—Glatt deepens the story by placing those murders in the context of the family's history. The Murdaughs "dominated a huge swath of South Carolina's luscious Lowcountry, epitomizing power, justice, and big, big money" by serving as the equivalent of district attorneys at a time when state laws also permitted them to maintain a lucrative civil practice; they were well-known locally as both prosecutors and personal injury lawyers. Leading up to the murders, Maggie was beginning to consider filing for divorce, and Paul had been indicted for homicide after drunkenly crashing a boat and killing one of its passengers. All of this, Glatt explains, motivated Alex to act in desperate defense of the family legacy and their accumulated fortune, supporting this thesis by digging into the scope of both their influence and their wealth. Through his judicious use of police records, interviews with sources including local historians, and Alex's own jailhouse phone calls (including one where he laughs off his crimes, saying "it is what it is"), Glatt has produced the equivalent of a juicy John Grisham novel, featuring a lead more "dark and totally devoid of conscience" than anyone he's ever researched. This real-life Southern noir lingers.
Customer Reviews
Good book.
Good book.
Excellent
Excellent overview of an affluent family that went off the tracks.
Got the Facts Wrong
I’ve been a fan of Mr. Glatt and have read most of his books so I was very surprised when I came across his incorrect description of what happened on the night of the murders of Paul and Maggie (Chapter 27 I believe). Glatt wrote that Alex baited Maggie into coming to Mozelle and laid in wait for her at the kennels, and then when she arrived at the kennels at 9:30pm he ambushed her. He then shot Paul who emerged from the feed room when he heard the shots that killed his mother. Despite the fact that later in the book in the extremely brief summary of the trial, Glatt accurately described how the murders went down, I can’t help but question the truthfulness of this book as a whole. Obvious fact-checking fail, plus sloppy editing (failing to notice and correct the book’s internal inconsistencies) make me question what else Glatt got wrong in this or any of his other true crime books.