Bestselling author of Black Mass and award-winning investigative journalist Dick Lehr will be speaking at the State Library on Wednesday, December 12, about his recent novel, Trell.
Soon to be adapted into a motion picture, Trell is the gripping story of a teenage girl who teams up with a Boston Globe reporter in an effort to free her wrongfully-convicted father. Written for a young adult audience, this novel is a departure from Lehr’s previous true-crime bestsellers; however, much like his previous books, Trell focuses on the issue of social justice. The novel is inspired by the true story of Shawn Drumgold, a Boston man wrongfully convicted of the murder in the 1980s of a 12-year-old girl from Roxbury. Lehr’s investigative reporting on Drumgold’s case ultimately led to his release from a life sentence without parole.
Author Dick Lehr is currently a Professor of Journalism at Boston University and previously has worked as a reporter at the Hartford Courant and The Boston Globe. During his time at the Globe, Lehr was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and served as a longtime member of the newspaper’s Spotlight Team.
Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.