Killing Mister Watson

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.