John J. Lennon replies to letters to the editor in response to “Peddling Darkness,” his review published on March 9, 2023, of Sarah Weinman’s book Scoundrel.
EXCERPT
When the Edgar Smith saga ended in 1976 and he went away for good, Sarah Weinman and I weren’t yet born. Fast forward to today. We’re both writers in this era of mass incarceration, me from the inside and her from the outside. In her letter, Weinman is right when she writes about my reality — “The criminal justice system has unquestionably tilted toward punishment and retribution” — and she’s also right that her book “cannot, and should not, solve these problems.”