Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption [Hardcover]

Michael W. Cuneo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 2004

The haunting true story of a triple murder in the Ozarks, two lovers on the lam, and a death-row inmate saved by the pope.
On a spring day more than ten years ago, sixty-nine-year-old Lloyd Lawrence was gunned down in rural Missouri. The shooter also turned his twelve-gauge shotgun on Lawrence’s wife and their paraplegic grandson. The crime took place in a region known mostly for Pentecostal fervor, country music, and family-friendly tourism. But soon the murders would expose a dark underbelly in the Ozarks: Lloyd Lawrence was a notoriously violent crystal-meth kingpin, killed by an aspiring drug dealer named Darrell Mease.Capturing the raw circumstances that took Mease from his clean-cut youth to the front lines of Vietnam and an aftermath of drug use, Almost Midnight unites an unforgettable range of characters in some of America’s most peculiar locales. When Mease and his girlfriend fled to the Southwest on a hair-raising road trip, this only brought Mease closer to death row. After his conviction, he claimed to receive a religious revelation guaranteeing that his life would be saved by miraculous intervention, a long-shot prediction that came true. A bizarre twist of fate brought Pope John Paul II to Saint Louis, where he pleaded with Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan to commute the sentence just months before Carnahan’s fatal plane crash. In a triumph of investigative journalism, Michael Cuneo gained unprecedented access to Mease and immersed himself in the culture of the Ozarks, exploring its bucolic farms and seedy strip joints, and the lives of its preachers, cockfighters, and outlaws. By turns chilling and riveting, Almost Midnight brilliantly evokes the life of controversial renegade Mease, and the stranger-than-fiction world he still inhabits.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Darrell Mease, the Ozarks-born convicted murderer who got a death row intervention from Pope John Paul II in 1998 (the execution was to take place on the day the Pope visited St. Louis), is at the center of this true crime saga. Cuneo (American Exorcism) follows Mease from his religious upbringing in the backwoods of Missouri, through his tour in Vietnam and baptism into the crystal methamphetamines trade to his love affair with Mary Epps and brutal murder of a drug kingpin, his wife and disabled grandson. Cuneo looks closely at Mease's time in prison, where he rediscovers religion and, while professing "God is my lawyer," is miraculously delivered from lethal injection just as he predicted he would be. Cuneo's detailed descriptions of the virtues (loyalty, self-reliance, faith, family) and negatives (violence, chemical dependency, lawlessness) of the Ozarks' culture not only fleshes out Mease's personality but also vividly portrays this overlooked area of Americana. Cuneo's skillful writing allows him to convey the romantic notions of Mease's outlaw ways and travels on America's back roads, while never romanticizing the violence or the hand-to-mouth living. The book could use a little more analysis, however, on the impact Vietnam and crystal meth had on Mease's psyche and behavior. When all is said and done, one cannot help but appreciate Cuneo's in-depth, interwoven stories of Mease and the Ozarks.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Praise for American Exorcism by Michael W. Cuneo
“A wild exploration of the spookier and more fantastical side of Middle America.”
—Salon
“Armed with a wry wit and girded in the armor of an inquiring but ‘open-mindedly skeptical’ intellect . . . Cuneo argues convincingly that . . . pop exorcism’s quick-fix approach to spiritual maladies is uncomfortably close to the plastic-surgery mentality of secular culture.” —Washington Post Book World
“Highly entertaining. An insightful look into another form of millennial madness.”
—Jane
“With skill and wit and sympathy, [Michael Cuneo’s] study of exorcism in the United States is a pioneering work of extraordinary depth and insight.” —Father Andrew M. Greeley, Professor of Social Science, University of Chicago
“Provocative and frightening.” —Book magazine
“Damned good reporting.” —Maxim
“Astute social criticism . . . Cuneo is both a skeptical and sensitive observer.” —The Nation
“As if we need any more reasons to be freaked out about religious zealots . . . along comes Michael Cuneo to jolt the green vomit out of us right here in our own backyard.” —Hartford Advocate
“Michael Cuneo has done an amazing thing. He’s written a book on demonic possession that is compulsively readable without being lurid or sensational. If it doesn’t cause you to consider your own demons and how you deal with them, you need to read it again.”
—Haven Kimmel, author of The Solace of Leaving Early and A Girl Named Zippy
“Mesmerizing . . . Lucidly written and riveting as any horror novel.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Cuneo brings to his subject a delightful combination of respect, curiosity, irony, and a humor that manages to be wry without being derisive. [American Exorcism’s] findings are delivered with wit, wisdom, and lucidity.” —Trenton Times
"Cuneo [is] a very able tour guide on this trip through a part of American religion that has rarely been objectively described.” —Library Journal (starred review)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (January 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767913426
• ISBN-13: 978-0767913423
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #729,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong telling of an interesting story, April 14, 2004

By 

kevnm "kevnm" (Costa Mesa, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption (Hardcover)

Roughly the first half of the book concerns the life and crimes of Darrell Mease, hard-partying hillbilly 'Nam vet and would be meth cooker. The detail in which Mease's life is recounted makes it hard not to sympathize with him and to understand his crimes, a feeling which the author appears to share.

The second half of the story explores Darrell's trial, imprisonment, conversion story and ultimate pardon from execution. In that part, Darrell is portrayed less sympathetically, and there is even a suggestion that he is undeserving of his eventual pardon from death row.
This apparent shift in viewpoint is appropriate to this complex tale, though, where Darrell comes to represent something different to everyone who comes into contact with him: death penalty opponents, Ozark locals, the victims' family, law enforcement, even Pope John Paul II!

It's a fine book, ultimately, and explores a lot of the issues (religion and government, death penalty, small town policing, veterans' problems, rural poverty, drugs) raised by this unusual case. Well written, compelling and highly recommended.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great writing, February 13, 2004

By 

Helen Roberts (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption (Hardcover)

After reading this book I was surprised that the author is an academic. This is not quite Truman Capote, but I think it is just as good as John Krakauer's book about the fundamentalist Mormons. He writes with great accessibility and insight about Mease and the world he comes from. I can't say I found Mease more sympathetic after all was said and done but I did gain a much better understanding of him and his actions.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My Name Is Darrell, November 17, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption (Hardcover)

I was reading a lot of books with the word MIDNIGHT in the title when I stumbled across this one. This is by no means the worst one of the bunch. In its own unique way, it's a fine study of redemption, breeding, and forgiveness.

And marketing too, for it seems almost as though the late Pope John Paul II was the victim of a marketing scam when he decided to pardon Darrell Mease, the killer at the heart of this wonderful biography. He was coming to St. Louis on a once in a lifetime trip, and a local cleric decided that he would gain some press by picking out a convicted killer and seeing what JPII could do for him.

It helped that the circumstances of the crime indicated that Darrell was himself well loved in his community (in the fields of rural Missouri) and that the man he killed, Lloyd Lawrence, was hated and feared. On the other hand, Lawrence's wife was killed too, as well as a poor paraplegic boy who hardly ever did anything hurtful to anyone.

Methamphetamine, the scourge of the Ozarks, was behind the killings. Darrell, who served time in Vietnam, was one of those who couldn't get it together after his tour of duty. He had a surface charm and affability, but inside, he was troubled. We get all of this through multiple narrators, people in the community who tell us his whole story from birth to the present. Like CITIZEN KANE, ALMOST MIDNIGHT gives us a constantly shifting perspective on a hidden corner of America. The popular TV sitcom MY NAME IS EARL will come to mind when you read this book, for the multiple murders that claimed the lives of the Lawrence family are just one more twist removed from the wacky trailer-motel life of the MY NAME IS EARL characters. Or, Johnny Depp in CRY BABY.