Publishers Weekly
02/19/2024
Journalist Cooper debuts with an enthralling account of the murder that tore apart a hard-hit farming community in Missouri. Cathy Robertson and her husband, Lyndel, were gunned down while they slept in Chillicothe, Mo., in 1990. Cathy died immediately; Lyndel was gravely injured. Although Lyndel first identified his daughter’s boyfriend as a suspect, the PI he tapped to work with local law enforcement ended up pointing the finger at Mark Woodworth, the 16-year-old who lived next door. Mark was tried and convicted twice (for second degree murder, then first), in rulings that were subsequently overturned. Through interviews and dogged research, Cooper lays out why the case against him eventually fell apart. Lyndel and Mark’s father were at odds over their joint business venture, which was decimated by the farming crisis of the 1980s, and Lyndel faced an embezzlement lawsuit. He hired the PI and leveraged local law enforcement connections to take the heat off that suit and close the murder investigation in one fell swoop. It wasn’t until the Woodworths hired attorney Robert Ramsey, who highlighted the overwhelming lack of concrete evidence keeping Mark in prison, that they were able to get the case thrown out for good in 2013. Cooper’s suspenseful narrative nimbly interweaves procedural beats and a vivid portrait of rural America in crisis. It’s an arresting work of true crime. Agent: Seren Adams, United Agents. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
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 hero's 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
