Product Description

On a quiet September afternoon, Lynne Sposito learned that her parents, Vincent and Margaret Sherry, had been shot to death in their Biloxi, Mississippi, home. One of the city's most prominent couples -- he served as Circuit Court judge and she was running for mayor -- the Sherrys were mourned by a community. But for a stunned and grieving daughter, the nightmare was just beginning.

Racing to Biloxi for answers, Lynne found the police investigation in chaos. The only sure lead was that the Sherrys' murder somehow was connected to the Dixie Mafia, a predatory band of criminals who ran Biloxi's beachfront hub of sex, drugs, and sleaze known as The Strip.

Lynne, armed with a savvy private eye -- and a .357 Magnum -- set out to accomplish what the authorities could not or would not do: hunt down her parents' assassins and bring them to justice.

Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes delivers a shocking and bizarre tale set against a teeming underworld of merciless killers, ruthless con men, and venal politicians. Mississippi Mud portrays how one woman's steely obsession for the truth shook a city to its foundation -- and nearly destroyed everything she loved.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #872438 in Books
• Published on: 1995-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 448 pages

From Amazon.com
Biloxi, Mississippi, has a "strip" of nightclubs and casinos where prostitution, drugs, and crooked gambling flourish unchecked. An older couple who thought they were retiring to a quiet seaside town got too deeply involved with local politics and the Dixie Mafia and were murdered. The investigation would've sunk beneath the muddy swirl of graft and business as usual but for the tenacious efforts of the victims' daughter. Despite death threats and indifferent law enforcement officials, she hired a private detective and swore to do whatever it took to bring her parents' killers to trial. Horror/suspense writer Peter Straubfinds the story reminiscent of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen: "Like those writers, Edward Humes can make the wild, amoral, scheming sleazoids he parades before our eyes all but sing and dance on the page. Here is America, fat and happy, both hands crammed into the till." Mississippi Mud was a 1995 finalist for the Edgar Award in Fact Crime.

From Publishers Weekly
Vincent Sherry, a circuit court judge in Biloxi, and his wife, Margaret, city council member and a reform mayoral candidate, were fatally shot at their Mississippi home in 1987. The eldest of their four children, Lynne Sposito, hired a private detective. Biloxi had a history as a sin city; some of its cops were corrupt, while others were barely competent, and the police tried to implicate the Sherrys' adopted son in the murder. The individual perceived by Sposito to be most likely to suffer from a reform administration was Mike Gillich, who owned a number of strip joints in Biloxi; he was connected to con man Kirksey Nix, who was subsequently convicted of murder in Louisiana and given a life sentence. Nix's longtime lawyer was Vincent Sherry's law partner, Pete Halat, who may or may not have profited from Nix's many scams. Four years after the slayings, Gillich, Nix and two others were found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Sherrys' murder and given long prison terms. But questions remain, notes the author: "No one has been charged with the actual killings." Humes ( Buried Secrets ) has written an exceptionally fine depiction of a multifaceted case. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Mississippi Mud tells the story of the shocking 1987 double murder of Biloxi mayoral candidate Margaret Sherry and her husband, Judge Vincent Sherry. Lynn Sposito, their daughter, quickly found out that the Biloxi police seemed more intent on covering up the murder rather than solving it. With supreme courage and the aid of a highly recommended private investigator, she uncovered connections between her father's law firm and partner and the Dixie Mafia-a tight-knit circle of criminals who kept Biloxi's gambling casinos and strip joints running-and particularly to an immensely profitable telephone scam being run directly from the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Sposito discovered a plot to kill her parents because somehow a large portion of the immense profits from the scam was missing and her father had been implicated. Bringing this information to the authorities finally led to the conviction of a number of people for conspiracy to commit murder. This book has been carefully constructed to read like a fast-paced, engrossing suspense novel. The reader is quickly caught up in the richly described world of teeming corruption that is Biloxi, and the characters seem more like the fictional Elmore Leonard types than "real people." Highly recommended.
Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.