The Crime of Sheila McGough

By Janet Malcolm

Book Overview

The Crime of Sheila McGough is Janet Malcolm's brilliant expos 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375704590
• ISBN13: 9780375704598
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"