Books like Careless people by Sarah Bartlett Churchwell

In the fall of 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald, freshly acclaimed for *Tales of the Jazz Age*, returned to New York to publish his fourth book. Amid the glitter of jazz clubs, speakeasies and celebrity parties, the Fitzgeralds famously drank, argued, and mused. Coinciding with their return was the brutal double murder of Hall and Mills in neighboring New Jersey. The case became dubbed the "crime of the decade," yet a police investigation yielded little beyond sensational headlines. Sarah Churchwell retraces that pivotal autumn, blending biography, historical research, lost newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival materials. She uncovers how the shock of the Mills‑Hall murder and the cultural upheaval of Jazz Age America influenced the shaping of *The Great Gatsby*, offering a gripping dual narrative that traces both the novel’s birth and the mystery that haunted its origins.

First publish date: 2013