Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case

Combines superb courtroom drama with a sweeping view of a lush world fed by unfettered power and clamorous racism. (New York Daily News) First-rate history that works as a true-crime thriller and as a social and political history. (Bryan Burrough, coauthor of Barbarians at the Gate and author of Public Enemies) Part true-crime thriller, part social history, and an absolute “page-turner” (Chicago Tribune)

In 1931 Hawai‘i, Thalia Massie, the aristocratic wife of a naval officer, accused five nonwhite men of gang rape. When the trial ended in a hung jury, Thalia’s mother arranged for one of the suspects to be murdered - an act sanctioned by sympathetic whites as an “honor killing.” The ensuing murder trial, Clarence Darrow’s last, enthralled the nation and exposed the shocking realities of a Hawaiian “paradise.” This is the riveting story behind one of the pivotal scandals of American history.