Book Nook - The Devil You Knew and You Will Know Me By My Deeds (Author Guest Post)

Guest post by Mike Cobb (www.mikecobbwriter.com)

 There is no grief more harrowing than that of a mother who has lost her child—a sorrow so deep it defies words, a wound that never fully heals. And when that loss is not due to illness or accident, but to brutal violence, the tragedy is compounded, steeped in horror and injustice. 

The mothers of the black victims of the Atlanta Child Murders between 1979 and 1982 knew this agony all too well. Their children vanished, only to be found dead, their futures stolen in the cruelest way imaginable. 

And yet, as unbearable as the mothers’ grief was, they also bore the weight of a city that seemed unwilling to listen, a justice system that moved too slowly, and a nation that barely noticed. Their sorrow was not just personal but collective, the pain of a community crying out for answers, for justice, for an end to the nightmare that left so many mothers mourning.

I remember those tragic murders all too well—the fear that gripped Atlanta, the unbearable weight of each new headline. Every time another child was found, I read about it in the paper, dreading the details, feeling the raw anguish of the parents who had lost their children. Their grief was laid bare in ink, their cries for justice often met with silence or indifference. I remember the photos of missing children, their faces frozen in time, and the growing sense of helplessness as the bodies kept turning up. It felt like waiting for the next shoe to drop, knowing it inevitably would. 

It seemed at times as if those in power weren’t moving fast enough to stop the nightmare and find the killer. Through it all, the mothers kept searching for answers, kept demanding justice, even as their worlds shattered around them.

Against this backdrop of fear and sorrow, I wrote You Will Know Me by My Deeds, the sequel to The Devil You Knew. The story of the Atlanta Child Murders runs like a dark current through the novel, intertwined with the ongoing saga of Billy and Cynthia Tarwater. Someone is out to get them, but they don’t know why. Is it related somehow to what happened to Cynthia in The Devil You Knew? Is it tied to the child murders? Or is it a sinister connection between the two? As they struggle to uncover the truth, the weight of history and the pain of unanswered questions loom over them, just as they loomed over Atlanta all those years ago.

A key thread running through You Will Know Me by My Deeds is the unsettling possibility that Wayne Williams, the man long blamed for the Atlanta Child Murders, may not be guilty of all of them. Officially, he was convicted of killing only two black men, yet in the court of public opinion—and in the eyes of law enforcement eager to close the case—he became the face of the city's nightmare. But doubts linger, whispers of other perpetrators, of unfinished business, of justice left incomplete. 

In the novel, this uncertainty casts a long shadow over Billy and Cynthia Tarwater’s search for answers. As they navigate the dangers closing in on them, they begin to question not only who is after them but whether the past holds truths that were buried too soon—truths that could change everything.