cover image And Deliver Us from Evil: A Trilogy of Murder, Ministers, and Millionaires

And Deliver Us from Evil: A Trilogy of Murder, Ministers, and Millionaires

Mike Cochran. Texas Monthly Press, $17.95 (213pp) ISBN 978-0-87719-159-9

The first volume in a projected true-crime series, this book offers a trio of Texas cases, two of which will be familiar to crime buffs. These involve the 1987 case of the Rev. Walker Railey, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Dallas, tried but not convicted of the attempted murder of his wife, and T. Cullen Davis, a multimillionaire who in the 1970s was tried once for murder and twice for soliciting murder but never found guilty. Less well publicized, the third case deals with Kenneth Miller, an innocent man accused of rape in 1974 who was absolved 12 years later thanks to a sort-of Inspector Javert with a sense of fairness. The author concludes with a pedestrian essay on Texas murders in a book that even the home folk are likely to find boring. Cochran and Lumpkin are both journalists with the AP. Photos not seen by PW. (May)