Author Deb Miller Landau at UGA

Currently listed at #1 on Oprah Daily’s Best True Crime Books, A Devil Went Down to Georgia, details the shocking events that followed Lita McClinton Sullivan’s murder in 1987, including the surprising lack of evidence, racial bias in the justice system, and the international manhunt for Lita’s killer. Full of twists and turns, legal battles, and the McClinton family’s unrelenting dedication to justice, Landau’s rigorous investigation is the first complete account of this tragic American crime:

“In 2004 as a writer for Atlanta magazine, I wrote a retrospective about the murder of Lita McClinton Sullivan, a Black socialite who was gunned down by a flower deliveryman in 1987. It was a wild story about an interracial couple navigating the racism in the South, an elusive hired hitman, a suspicious husband, an international manhunt, and a family’s long road to justice. My article, Social Disgraces, was anthologized in the Best American Crime Writing the following year.

It’s a story that’s stayed with me for decades. I’ve hauled the files around the country in a banker’s box, never able to stop thinking about the victim, Lita McClinton, and her family.

So, I re-opened the box and spent the past three years researching, interviewing, and writing A Devil Went Down to Georgia (Aug 2024, Pegasus Books), the only complete telling of this incredible story.