The Shooter at Midnight, Sean Patrick Cooper
The Shooter at Midnight, Sean Patrick Cooper
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The Shooter at Midnight
Murder, Corruption, and a Farming Town Divided

Author: Sean Patrick Cooper

Narrator: Sean Patrick Cooper

Unabridged: 10 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 04/30/2024


Synopsis

“Gripping . . . A potent account of the crime and its aftermath, placing its story of heartbreaking violence and injustice in a larger portrait of a rural American town.”—The Wall Street Journal

The harrowing true story of a cold-blooded murder and the campaign to bring justice to a suffering Midwestern town

On a November night in 1990, Cathy Robertson is murdered in her home outside Chillicothe, Missouri. After law enforcement conduct a haphazard investigation, the sheriff’s office puts the case in the hands of a Kansas City private eye with his own agenda. In a close-knit town still reeling from the aftereffects of the farming crisis, friends and neighbors abruptly fracture into opposing camps. Mark Woodworth, a Robertson family neighbor, eventually receives four life sentences for a crime that a growing group of local supporters believe he didn’t commit.

In a surprising, dramatic narrative that spans decades, Mark’s family turns to Robert Ramsey, an attorney willing to take on a corrupt political machine suppressing the truth. But the community’s way of life is irrevocably damaged by the parallel tragedies of the farming crisis and Cathy’s unsolved murder, in a gripping story about the fault-lines of a fracturing America that continue to cut across the farm belt today.

About The Author

Sean Patrick Cooper is a journalist who has contributed narrative features and essays to The New Republic, n+1, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Baffler, Tablet, UnDark, The Atavist, The Daily Beast, Victory Journal, The Awl, and others. He received an MA in journalism at New York University, where he was a Department Fellow in the Literary Reportage Program, and a BA in English Literature from Rutgers University. This is his first book.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brendan on April 27, 2024

Corruption is a word that gets overused nowadays. I feel it should really be applied only when an entire system fails because of nefarious reasons. So when the subtitle to Sean Patrick Cooper's The Shooter at Midnight mentions corruption, I was ready to get my pedantic pants on. After having complet......more

Goodreads review by Mrs. on July 11, 2024

Typical true crime books are about a crime, its discovery, the ensuing investigation and identification of the probable perpetrator, and subsequent trial[s]. The Shooter at Midnight, by Sean Patrick Cooper, is atypical. There is a crime and it is “discovered” in real time by one of its victims. Seve......more

Goodreads review by Jimmy on January 28, 2025

Now I never have heard of this wrongful conviction book but it makes my blood boil as much as the devil’s knot did. This is the stuff of nightmares regarding our criminal justice system. The difference between this one and the West Memphis Three was they actually had a legit suspect with evidence the......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on April 22, 2024

As a criminologist, I find stories of injustice appalling. Wrongful convictions top that list for me. So, the story of Mark Woodworth- and the railroading of him- written out in plain English, is absolutely stomach churning. I can’t believe it’s taken so long for someone to write this book, although......more

Goodreads review by Kat on January 06, 2024

Who knew there could be so much soap opera drama in a small farming community! I was enraged by the injustice of this story, but as far as true crime cases go, it was not my favorite. The story meandered a bit into farming history, which gives a great background on which to set our scene, but overal......more


Quotes

The Shooter at Midnight offers a deep look into the criminal justice system, with all its warts, and reveals that the system is only as good as the people who operate within it.”—New York Journal of Books

“Gripping . . . A potent account of the crime and its aftermath, placing its story of heartbreaking violence and injustice in a larger portrait of a rural American town.”The Wall Street Journal

"An arresting work of true crime. . . Cooper’s suspenseful narrative nimbly interweaves procedural beats and a vivid portrait of rural America in crisis."—Publishers Weekly

“In unspooling the story of a murder in the American heartland, Sean Patrick Cooper finds much more than he bargained for. This is a book about a terrible crime, but it's also about economic crises in the farming community, small-town injustice, and the warping effects of grief within a family. A probing, compelling, surprising read.”—Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites

“Riveting from the offset, The Shooter at Midnight is an expertly woven story of a crime that tore a small-town asunder and its devastating fallout in an already fractured community.  With an extraordinary eye for detail, Cooper navigates the many legal complexities of the case with ease and empathy, never losing sight of the very human tragedy that lies at its core.”—Susan Jonusas, author of Hell’s Half-Acre

"Though it begins with an account of a murder, The Shooter at Midnight is much more than true crime. With a detective's eye for detail and a journalist's passion for truth, Cooper unravels a miscarriage of justice, showing how an actual conspiracy spread from humble farmhouses to fancy courtrooms in 1980s Missouri. This is stunning and essential storytelling."Jason Fagone, author of the bestselling The Woman Who Smashed Codes

“Like all first-rate true crime stories, The Shooter at Midnight not only takes the reader into the fascinating human story of the crime itself, with its wonderfully stubborn cast of heroes and villains refusing to conform to type, but it also opens up the wider context in which the crime occurs – in this case the ruin and strife spread across rural America by the farming crisis of the 1980s. The result is a gripping, deeply informed book in which political folly, explosive violence and an agonizing injustice play out with the intensity – and the surprising redemption – of ancient tragedy.” —James Lasdun, author of Give Me Everything You Have