Hellhound on his Trail
Hampton Sides
Hellhound on his Trail
This is the story of two very different men whose lives catastrophically interweaved over the course of some nine months in the late 1960s: one was a thief and con man called James Earl Ray, the other one of the greatest American figures of the twentieth century, Martin Luther King Jr. Hampton Sides follows in Ray's footsteps as he escapes from prison, creates a new identity for himself and becomes convinced of his mission to kill King. Hellhound on His Trail is equally the story of King himself in his last months, fighting to keep his ideals alive in the face of intensive FBI surveillance and his own exhausted frustration. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Ray and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the fateful moment, on 4 April 1968 at a Memphis hotel, when the drifter finally caught up with his prey. Nationwide riots were sparked by the assassination, followed by the largest manhunt in American history.
3.8 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
True Crime |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
480 |
| RRP |
£25.00 |
| Date of Publication |
June 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-1846143618 |
| Publisher |
Allen Lane |
| |
This is the story of two very different men whose lives catastrophically interweaved over the course of some nine months in the late 1960s: one was a thief and con man called James Earl Ray, the other one of the greatest American figures of the twentieth century, Martin Luther King Jr. Hampton Sides follows in Ray's footsteps as he escapes from prison, creates a new identity for himself and becomes convinced of his mission to kill King. Hellhound on His Trail is equally the story of King himself in his last months, fighting to keep his ideals alive in the face of intensive FBI surveillance and his own exhausted frustration. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Ray and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the fateful moment, on 4 April 1968 at a Memphis hotel, when the drifter finally caught up with his prey. Nationwide riots were sparked by the assassination, followed by the largest manhunt in American history.
Read an extract from the book on the New York Times website
Reviews
The Sunday Times
Dominic Sandbrook
"While Sides’s book breaks little new ground, it is nevertheless a terrifically exciting and engrossing read. Some readers may find his informal, slangy style a bit off-putting: by the time Ray reaches “groovy, bell-bottom London”, a city where Scotland Yard’s “leading sleuth” wears a “natty hound’s-tooth blazer”, I was steeling myself for an appearance by Austin Powers. But as a re-creation of sweltering, angry Memphis in 1968, and as a portrait of a killer and his victim, it works tremendously well."
30/05/2010
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The Washington Post
David J. Garrow
"The author's depiction of his home town's role in the story is enlightening, and his efforts to present King's struggles and the FBI's behavior cover familiar ground with hardly a misstep. When Sides errs, as he does in one instance regarding King's personal life, it's because he unknowingly accepts faulty information from a respected book; when he does his own reporting – as when, for example, he interviews a Kentucky politician who was one of King's lovers and was with him that fatal evening in Memphis – he makes a valuable contribution to the historical record."
16/05/2010
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The New York Times
Janet Maslin
"...it winds up sounding lifelike and authoritative if not comprehensive. Who sent Ray on this mission? Mr. Sides doesn’t know. How did Mr. Jackson wind up inaccurately telling television reporters that he was the last person to whom Dr. King spoke? Mr. Sides addresses this question but doesn’t harp on it. He doesn’t have to. Mr. Sides was a 6-year-old in Memphis when Dr. King was shot. His main objective in this bold, dynamic, unusually vivid book is to bring an adult’s perspective to events that he could neither fathom nor forget."
21/04/2010
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The Observer
Peter Preston
"There are some problems with Sides's fact clad as fiction. Often we get aggregation, not investigation: too many meaningless details piled one on top of the other like an old Sunday Times "Insight" story run riot… But, most of the time, the narrative races along, a deadly road trip heading to a disastrous conclusion."
06/06/2010
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The New Statesman
David Flusfeder
"Sides's research into secondary sources and his marshalling of them is most impressive, with the energy and readability of a thriller … Where the book falls down is in the sketchiness of motivation. We are shown how King died; we never learn why."
07/06/2010
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The New York Times
Bryan Burrough
"Sides is not overly interested in new research, thoroughgoing analysis or traditional biography. He wants to deliver a heart-pounding nonfiction thriller. This must be the first book on King that owes less to Taylor Branch than Robert Ludlum. If you accept this approach as valid — and I’m inclined to, if a tad reluctantly — this book will engage you... Yet I couldn’t entirely escape a feeling of queasines ... a vague sense that King’s murder was being exploited for entertainment purposes."
06/05/2010
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