Mad Notions: A True Tale of Murder and Mayhem

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

On November 6, 1994, Kelly Joe Lovera, a college mathematics instructor,
was brutally murdered with a baseball bat while he was sleeping in a
small rented apartment located in Frog Alley, a rundown section of
Sievierville, Tennessee. Lovera’s body was later found, inside his
black Jeep Cherokee, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

John Lawrence Reynolds, who has written five mysteries and won two
prestigious awards for crime writing, was contacted about the case by a
childhood chum, Richard Rae. Rae’s son, Brett, was accused of the
killing, and his dad needed to know the truth. Reynolds’s account of
the case is fast-paced and titillating (there is drug smuggling,
suicide, and plenty of sex). Much of the focus is on Lovera’s wife,
Shayne, a former high-school Junior Miss who would stop at nothing to
attain the good life.

The book’s main weakness is the apparent blending of fact and
fiction, a technique most keenly apparent when the thoughts of those
involved in the case are reported. Still, readers partial to
action-packed crime stories will probably not quibble.