Killing Mister Watson

Name: Killing Mister Watson
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Peter Matthiessen
ISBN: 9781461811367

Author: Peter Matthiessen

Series: Watson #1

Narrator: Mark Hammer, Barbara Rosenblat, Norman Dietz, George Guidall

Unabridged: 17 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/14/2011

Categories: Fiction, Mystery & Detective

Synopsis

The National Book Award–winning author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Peter Matthiessen is a master of both fiction and nonfiction. Killing Mister Watson is his bestselling, fact-based novel that pieces together the life and death of Edgar J. Watson.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Watson was an infamous brute who ruled his remote patch of Florida with an iron fist. He had no problem killing those who got in his way, and was even rumored as the murderer of legendary outlaw Belle Starr. By 1910, Watson’s neighbors had endured enough.
They greeted him as he returned home and promptly gunned him down.

Grounded in regional and historical authenticity, Killing Mister Watson brilliantly blurs the finer distinctions between fact and fiction to tell a gripping, disturbing tale.

About Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) was the author of more than thirty books, including the New York Times bestseller The Snow Leopard. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1974. He was cofounder of the Paris Review and won two National Book Awards, the 2000 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and the 2010 Spiros Vergos Prize for Freedom of Expression.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Charlene on December 19, 2011

A very interesting book -- set in the "frontier/wilderness" area of south Florida around 1900, told from multiple viewpoints. Mr. Watson was an enigmatic figure -- farmer, family man, good neighbor, and probable killer. This is the first in a trilogy in which the author is teasing out the real story......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on May 01, 2009

Some writers write fiction, some non-fiction, and never the twain shall meet. Right? I don’t think so. A good writer can write whatever they want. Perhaps the best example living today is Peter Matthiessen. Matthiessen started his writing career as a novelist, a spinner of tales, but he is perhaps b......more

Goodreads review by J on June 07, 2014

The first part of this blew me away. From the potent, almost biblical description of the eponymous deed which opens the book, to the incredible range of voices full of history, rumor and conspiracy about E.J. Watson, and about the weird, insular world of the Florida everglades circa 1900. the book f......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on January 18, 2016

Absolutely brilliant. I must find the other two in the trilogy and complete it. Or, I'll have to find the single volume that Matthiessen wrote that retells the three books in one and for which he won a major award - National Book Award, I believe. This was a remarkable telling in multiple voices of a......more

Goodreads review by Martin on March 22, 2014

Edgar J. Watson is in the pantheon of American bad guys, right up there with Cormac McCarthy's Judge Holden. If your honest, and who among us is not, he is an ambiguous figure, like Holden. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know the jury of readers, feeling compelled to decide one way or the other, would sen......more