Books like Almost Midnight by Michael W. Cuneo

Almost Midnight details the harrowing 2003 triple homicide in rural Missouri in which Lloyd Lawrence, a notorious crystal‑meth kingpin, was gunned down along with his wife and paraplegic grandson. The murders, committed by aspiring drug dealer Darrell Mease, expose a darker side of the Ozarks, a region often characterized by Pentecostal faith, country music, and family tourism. Cuneo follows Mease’s trajectory from a clean‑cut youth to a Vietnam veteran, his descent into drug use, and a road‑trip flight to the Southwest that ultimately brought him to the death‑row. After his conviction, Mease reported a religious revelation that his life would be saved by divine intervention—an event that materialized when Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis and persuaded Governor Mel Carnahan to commute Mease’s sentence, moments before Carnahan’s fatal plane crash. Drawing on unprecedented access, Cuneo immerses the reader in the Ozarks’ bucolic farms, seedy strip joints, and the lives of its preachers, cockfighters and outlaws, weaving a gripping narrative of crime, faith, and fate.

First publish date: 2004