A WILD SURGE OF GUILTY PASSION

A WILD SURGE OF GUILTY PASSION is a historical novel based on a real crime saga in 1920's Manhattan. Ruth Snyder is a voluptuous and reckless woman trapped in a loveless marriage, who not only wishes to escape her husband but wants him dead - and the sooner the better. No less miserable in his own marriage, Judd Gray, a dapper corset and brassiere salesman, meets Ruth in a Manhattan speakeasy and a torrid affair results. As the relationship intensifies, Ruth insists that Judd should kill her husband. What follows from the clumsy killing is a thrilling exposition of the police investigation, even as Ruth and Judd attempt to escape prosecution.

"A WILD SURGE OF GUILTY PASSION is by turns blackly comic, irresistibly seductive, and implacably devastating. As a tour of the Seven Deadly Sins, it's pretty much unsurpassed in recent literature." - Jim Shepard

Ron Hansen's best known work, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", was turned into a film starring Brad Pitt in 2007.