Mississippi Mud.

Edward Humes Simon and Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. 368 pp., $23.

Reviewed by Timothy K. McMorrow

Mississippi Mud is the story of the double murder of Vincent Sherry, a Biloxi, Mississippi, attorney and judge, and Margaret Sherry, his politically active wife, who made a career of exposing the corruption of Biloxi politics.

The book covers the four-year effort of the Sherrys' eldest daughter, Lynn Sposito, to see the murders solved and the perpetrators brought to justice. It is a good story, and it has some entertaining scenes and well-written chapters. But, ultimately, the book left this reviewer unsatisfied.

Humes begins with a description of the murder scene, the discovery of the bodies, and the botched investigation that followed. Although every experienced criminal attorney can tell stories of investigative mistakes, the errors in the Sherry case were extreme and the investigation haphazard. Throughout Part I, readers can feel Sposito's frustration building as she comes to believe that powerful people do not want the murders solved.

The book suddenly shifts gears in Part II, focusing on Kirksey Nix, a convicted murderer who ran scams from his prison cell in Louisiana, and his relationship with Vincent Sherry's law partner and several other nefarious characters. Humes aptly describes how Nix and his compatriots continued their scams under the authorities' noses. But the change in direction of the book is a little too abrupt, and Humes takes too long to get back to the central focus--the connection between Nix and the Sherry murders.

Part III covers the efforts of investigators to piece together a case against the murderers and conspirators. The key witnesses are shady characters whose credibility is, to be charitable, suspect. And the investigators lack the smoking gun that will pull the case together. Eventually, the U.S. attorney obtains an indictment--but not for the murders of Vincent and Margaret Sherry. Rather, the indictment is for conspiracy to kill the Sherrys.

Part IV covers the trial. The evidence against the conspirators is hardly overwhelming--and if this reviewer, a prosecutor, feels that way, one can only imagine how criminal defense attorneys will react. The prosecutors at trial were not those who were most heavily involved in the investigation, which causes predictable problems in a case that relies on subtle knowledge of conversations, events, and precise times dating over several years. On the other hand, the defense attorneys make a couple of critical errors and tall into evidentiary traps that open the door to damning evidence.

The book is unsatisfying in part because there is no resolution of the case. Two people were brutally murdered, and the murders remain unsolved.

The author's efforts to piece together the case may be of interest to lawyers who have handled cases with evidence that seems to slip through their hands like grains of sand. And the description of Biloxi politics and corruption is entertaining. The last half of the book, however, dragged in several spots. It also was difficult to keep many characters straight in the reader's mind sometimes it was hard to remember who did or said what to whom and how this was relevant to the case against the charged conspirators. This is one of the weakest aspects of the book.

Although Mississippi Mud is a good read, and trial lawyers should enjoy it, its weaknesses keep it out of the top echelon of trial-related books.