The Rope

A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP

Alex Tresniowski

• Publisher: 37 Ink
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781982114039
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982114046
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

From New York Times bestselling author Alex Tresniowski comes a “compelling” (The Guardian) and “riveting” (The New York Times Book Review) true-crime thriller recounting the 1910 murder of ten-year-old Marie Smith, the dawn of modern criminal detection, and the launch of the NAACP.

In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time.

Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly-covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces—religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics, and America’s Jim Crow racial violence.

History and true crime collide in this “compelling and timely” (Vanity Fair) murder mystery featuring characters as complex and colorful as those found in the best psychological thrillers—the unconventional truth-seeking detective Ray Schindler; the sinister pedophile Frank Heidemann; the ambitious Asbury Park Sheriff Clarence Hetrick; the mysterious “sting artist,” Carl Neumeister; the indomitable crusader Ida Wells; and the victim, Marie Smith, who represented all the innocent and vulnerable children living in turn-of-the-century America.

“Brisk and cinematic” (The Wall Street Journal), The Rope is an important piece of history that gives a voice to the voiceless and resurrects a long-forgotten true crime story that speaks to the very divisions tearing at the nation’s fabric today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Chapter 1: Black Diamond
• Chapter 2: The Flower
• Chapter 3: A New Eden
• Chapter 4: Blood Under a Black Skin
• Chapter 5 : The Wanamassa
• Chapter 6: Burn Scars
• Chapter 7: 19½ Atkins Avenue
• Chapter 8: Came the Men
• Chapter 9: The Cry of Humanity
• Chapter 10: Gather My Race in My Arms
• Chapter 11: A Negro’s Crime
• Chapter 12: The Secret Plan
• Chapter 13: A Guilty Mind
• Chapter 14: Grace Foster
• Chapter 15: My Besetting Sin
• Chapter 16: Turn Our Faces to the West
• Chapter 17: A Balance of Goodness and Evil
• Chapter 18: The Greenhouse
• Chapter 19: What Kind of Fellow He Was
• Chapter 20: Afraid of What They Might Find
• Chapter 21: The Agonies of the Damned
• Chapter 22: Nobody Seen Me Do It
• Chapter 23: The Watchtower
• Chapter 24: Two Coffins
• Chapter 25: The Hellhound
• Chapter 26: The Hands of Parties Unknown
• Chapter 27: Frog James
• Chapter 28: The Rope
• Chapter 29: Immoral Thoughts and Expressions
• Chapter 30: Angels Could Do No More
• Chapter 31: Rope and Coal Oil
• Chapter 32: The Premonition
• Chapter 33: Once to Every Man and Nation
• Chapter 34: Still He Lay in Jail
• Chapter 35: What Was Her Name?
• Chapter 36: On the Square
• Chapter 37: “It Won’t Bring Her Back”
• Chapter 38: The Fortress
• Chapter 39: The Lord Has Willed It So
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright