Meanwhile, far away in South Carolina, the world's most renowned civil rights leader plans his next campaign: for a Poor People's Army to march on Washington, setting poverty alongside racism as imperatives for reform. and the hunt for his killer.I n Los Angeles, a white-faced, soft-featured man nobody remembers very clearly sits in his room and keeps avid track of the movements of Martin Luther King. The Telegraph – “ Tom Horan reads a forensic investigation into the assassination of Martin Luther King, Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides”Ĭhristian Science Monitor – “ A fresh and revealing look at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Wall Street Journal – “ Tracking King’s Killer – The murderous journey and final capture of James Earl Ray.” Los Angeles Times– “ A bestselling author reconstructs an assassin’s life and the events leading up to the killing of the Rev. and the International Hunt for His Assassin,’ by Hampton Sides”

Washington Post – “ Book review: ‘Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. New York Times – “ Tracing King’s Killer in a World of Shadow” Signed Book from Collected Works Bookstore, Santa Fe

Magnificent in scope, drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, this nonfiction thriller illuminates one of the darkest hours in American life-an example of how history is so often a matter of the petty bringing down the great. Against the backdrop of the resulting nationwide riots and the pathos of King’s funeral, Sides gives us a riveting cross-cut narrative of the assassin’s flight and the sixty-five-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England-a massive manhunt ironically led by Hoover’s FBI. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel when the drifter catches up with his prey. Humiliated, King fatefully vowed to return to Memphis in April. Hoping to resuscitate his faltering crusade, King joined the sanitation workers’ cause, but their march down Beale Street, the historic avenue of the blues, turned violent. On February 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage men were crushed to death in their hydraulic truck, provoking the exclusively African American workforce to go on strike. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man-whose real name was James Earl Ray-drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace’s racist presidential campaign. On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox.

Hellhound on his trail book