THE ROPE

Journalist Tresniowski links the work of a fearless detective and the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells as he reconstructs the case of a Black man arrested on a trumped-up murder charge.

This suspenseful, well-written true-crime tale will be an eye-opener for anyone who assumes that after Reconstruction, lynching remained a serious threat only in the South. The author tells the story of Thomas Williams, a Black odd-jobs man wrongfully accused of murdering Marie Smith, a 10-year-old White girl who was also sexually assaulted, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1910. Shortly after the crime, the police arrested Williams on circumstantial evidence and had to sneak him out of town to protect him from a lynch mob. With the consent of the police, a businessman skeptical of Williams’ guilt hired private detective Raymond C. Schindler—later praised as “the most brilliant and charismatic investigator of his time”—who developed his own theory of the case. In order to get a more plausible suspect to confess, the resourceful Schindler set up an elaborate sting, full of cloak-and-dagger intrigue that unfolds with mounting tension. Wells wasn’t involved in the Asbury Park murder, but the author gives that case a broad context by weaving in accounts of her anti-lynching campaigns and of her role in founding the NAACP, which helped with Williams’ legal defense. Unfortunately, Tresniowski supplies no endnotes, bibliography, or other data on how he reconstructed the details of his narrative, and their absence leaves open to question some aspects of his story. The section recounting the killer’s confession will be painful reading for sexual assault victims or parents of sexually abused children. Still, Tresniowski more than proves his point that early in the 20th century, “even in a northern state like New Jersey, a black prisoner had no guarantee of any safety in jail anywhere.”

High-velocity historical true crime lacking supporting data that would have enhanced its credibility.