The Hand of God
By Leinster, Murray
On a sweltering Southern night, a lone sheriff sits in a lamplit jail with a loaded revolver on his desk and a murderer unconscious in a cell—while an angry mob gathers outside demanding justice on their own terms. Outgunned and outnumbered, he must hold the line between law and lynching long enough for the truth to surface. Murray Leinster's taut 1930 crime story is a masterwork of suspense and moral courage, set against the raw tensions of a small-town South where the line between justice and vengeance is razor-thin. When a single overlooked detail changes everything, the case that seemed open and shut becomes anything but.
Publisher: Doubleday, Page & Co. (in Short Stories Magazine)
First published: 1930