Overview

At the National Council of Churches, Robert Spike had organized American churches to support the passage of both the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, to march in Selma and to organize in Mississippi. An important white leader in the black civil rights struggle, he helped the LBJ White House pass legislation and write crucial civil rights speeches. In the midst of what he described as the dirtiest fight of my life struggling to save a federal Mississippi education program, he was viciously murdered in Columbus, Ohio. The murder was never solved. Very little effort went into finding the murderer. The Columbus police and the FBI hinted the unsolved murder was connected to Spike's undisclosed gay life. During his father's rise in the civil rights movement, Paul Spike lived a life typical of a young man in the 1960s, finding his way through a labyrinth of booze, drugs, and girls. At Columbia University, he was active in the 1968 student rebellion and friends with many SDS radicals. That rootless life ended with his father's murder. Paul Spike lives in London where he writes about politics, literature, film, and travel for a wide range of newspapers and magazines.

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9781941026243

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Reviews

So unforgettable that I felt my heart was breaking when I came to the end. Paul Auster [Lisa] Sandlin blends pathos, humor, and poetic prose in a strong debut. --Kirkus, Starred Review Sandlin's clipped prose style is pleasingly eccentric, and can become downright Chandleresque. --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review I'm especially excited about this one ... rather than starring the dude who runs the detective agency, it's actually more about his secretary, a woman who just got out of prison after serving fourteen years for killing one of the men who raped her. --BookRiot Lisa Sandlin's The Do-Right is something akin to a rusted nail through the foot: it's dirty, it hurts, and it'll have you jumping up and down -- or possibly just on the floor. ... Sandlin makes fantastic use of familiar, archetypal characters and brings new life into them by crafting narrative that, past the surface of an exciting detective story, seems to search for a sense of grace or forgiveness. --Killer Nashville The book is alive, its people are living, and the city is its own messy self. --The Beaumont Enterprise The Do-Right won the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers. The Do-Right won Best First Private Eye Novel - Shamus Awards, by The Private Eye Writers of America. Intensely personal, informed and informative, Photographs of My Father by journalist, editor and author Paul Robert Spike is a consistently compelling read from beginning to end and one that will be of very special interest for the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the Civil Rights movement. Midwest Book Review So unforgettable that I felt my heart was breaking when I came to the end. Paul Auster, author of The Brooklyn Follies One of the most remarkable books the [Civil Rights] movement produced is this 1973 family memoir, newly reissued with an afterword by the author. Spike s memoir is as compelling as it must have been four decades ago. Matthew Walther, The Spectator Photographs of My Father has totally consumed the last couple of days of my life, unable as I was to put it down once started. It s absolutely wonderful. writer Terry Gilliam, Monty Python

Author Information

Paul Spike: Paul Robert Spike is an American author, editor and journalist. He is the son of civil rights leader Rev. Robert W. Spike. He is the author of five books and writes about politics, literature, film, style, travel and food for a wide variety of U.K. newspapers and magazines.

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