The Crime of Sheila McGough

The Crime of Sheila McGough is Janet Malcolm's brilliant exposé of miscarriage of justice in the case of Sheila McGough, a disbarred lawyer recently released from prison. McGough had served 2 1/2 years for collaborating with a client in his fraud, but insisted that she didn't commit any of the 14 felonies she was convicted.

"[N]o other writer tells better stories about the perpetual, the unwinnable, battle between narrative and truth." --The New York Times Book Review

An astonishingly persuasive condemnation of the cupidity of American law and its preference for convincing narrative rather than the truth, this is also a story with an unconventional heroine. McGough is a zealous defense lawyer duped by a white-collar con man; a woman who lives, at the age of 54, with her parents; a journalistic subject who frustrates her interviewer with her maddening literal-mindedness. Spirited, illuminating, delightfully detailed, The Crime of Sheila McGough is both a dazzling work of journalism and a searching meditation on character and the law.

Author: Janet Malcolm
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 02/08/2000
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.51lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.41d
ISBN: 9780375704598

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 02/06/2000 pg. 28