Neiwert's insights after covering right-wing extremism movements, his gift with language, his considerable storytelling skills all combine to make And Hell Followed With Her a near compulsive—and frightening—read. His ability to combine the history of these various organizations with the more immediate crime, and his analysis of the mindset of those who spent their lives immersed in the delusions of the right wing, make this book an important one, one with implications that reach far beyond one woman, two deaths and one border town.

If you'd like a sample, AlterNet published the entirety of Chapter 12 at its website:

The Anti-Immigrant Paranoia That Drives Shawna Forde to 'Patrol' the American Border

You may also want to peruse the discussion of the book that occurred Sunday at the Firedoglake Book Salon (thanks to Brian Tashman for hosting, and to Bev Wright for arranging everything).

Finally, here's the audio of my interview with Steve Scher at KUOW-FM earlier this week:

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I think you'll find that what they're saying is true: This book is a must-read, not just important but compelling as hell too.

Here's how Joe Conason described it:

In a masterwork reminiscent of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, David Neiwert tells the gripping story of a far-right underworld awash in criminality, racism, and violence -- except that it happened here and every word is true.

And Charles Pierce:

There is no more dogged or more courageous chronicler of the radical American Right than Dave Neiwert. In this latest work, he has found a human tragedy that is both utterly heartbreaking and utterly infuriating. He is the polestar by which we navigate the great distance between what we claim to be as a people, and what we truly are. A devastating, and extremely important, book.

David Takami has written a nice review of it for the Seattle Times:

David Neiwert’s new book is a taut true-crime story told with a measure of gravitas, gripping as much for the grisly particulars of a violent murder as for the fascinating context of the anti-immigrant movement playing out along the U. S-Mexico border.

... Neiwert shows how credulous media members — especially local television stations and CNN’s Lou Dobbs — whipped up the hysteria with softball interviews of Chris Simcox, Jim Gilchrist and other Minuteman leaders. As the author astutely observes, the anti-Latino, anti-immigrant frenzy recalls historical racism in the American west, especially anti-Asian campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries.

... Though the incidents in this book occurred nearly four years ago, the circumstances surrounding the murders are still highly relevant. As the national debate on immigration heats up again, this is a must-read for those who seek a deeper understanding of the issues and emotions behind the rhetoric.

Some of you may have noticed that an excerpt ran this weekend in Salon:

Secrets of the right-wing conspiracy playbook

The debate over immigration and the border is a classic example of how the extreme right manipulates real issues

This is an excerpt from Chapter Two, which describes the rise of the Minuteman movement, which the book focuses upon.

Finally, I was on KGO-AM in San Francisco last night with Pat Thurston, who interviewed me at length about the book. Here's that interview:

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As you can hear, Pat was enthralled with the story. I think you will be, too. The word is getting out.

(BTW, its official release date is tomorrow, but most stores are stocking it on their shelves today, and Amazon, B&N and Powell's are all delivering it now. The Kindle, Nook and other e-book versions will be available Tuesday.)

Longtime Crooks and Liars readers are already familiar with the tragic case of Brisenia Flores and her killer, the Minuteman movement figure Shawna Forde. Soon they will be able to read the full account of the story.

The book represents several years' worth of work. Beyond covering the exploits of Forde -- including her trial and those of her cohorts -- the book also covers the entire story of the Minuteman movement, which I have been writing about continuously since 2005, including an earlier investigation of its fundraising activities.

You can read some of the results of my most recent investigative work on the Minutemen and Shawna Forde's role in the movement in the AlterNet article I wrote last year, which in many ways is a condensed version of much of the material in And Hell Followed. However, as you'll see, there is a great deal more in the book, including much more detail, as well as the full story of what occurred in Arivaca that terrible night in 2009.

The book opens with a recounting of how that night ended, with a 911 call to dispatchers in Tucson. You can hear that call here:

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Of course, I have many people to thank for this book. But it is above all a project of the the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.

It's really an amazing, weird, twisted, and deeply disturbing story, one worthy of the Coen Brothers (and in fact, we are currently working on selling the film rights to the book). I hope you are as moved reading it as I was writing it.

Note from Susie: I read a whole lot, more than 50 books per year, and you couldn't pay me enough to make me recommend a book I don't like. Dave's new book is mesmerizing, in the same true-crime style as "Under The Banner of Heaven." Beautifully written and compelling. You really will want to read this --and then you'll want to see the movie.

I mentioned the other day that Minuteman movement cofounder Jim Gilchrist has been adamantly denying to everyone in sight the truth of what I reported about him earlier this week -- namely, that not only was he tightly associated with child killer Shawna Forde right up to the moment of her arrest, but he was aware of the crazy schemes she had in mind well before she tried enacting them.

It seems that yesterday, he posted in the comments of the AlterNet piece where I reported all this -- and I guess we can call this definitive:

Dear Readers,

David Neiwert's attempt to glorify the murder of a nine-year-old girl and her father for the purpose of bogus journalistic acclaim and the financial gain he anticipates from selling books represents perhaps the lowest form of "dirty" journalism.

I just got off the phone with private investigator Mike Carlucci and we both agree that David Neiwert has made up most of the so-called facts in his article. I, nor Mr. Carlucci ever had any discussion with Shawna Forde about her agenda to rob drug dealers.

Furthermore, the Minuteman Movement was not seriously interfered with by whatever Shawna Forde and her two accomplices did. The Minuteman Movement was put into a temporary tailspin by some selfish opportunists posing as immigration law enforcement advocates whose true interest was in hijacking the movement for their own financial and egotistical interests, in my opinion.

David Neiwert is a fiction writer who should be forthright with his readership and disclose that his selfish agenda is to sell books and be falsely heralded as "one of the great thinkers of our time."

Shawna Forde and her two thugs were lone wolves who operated their own organization distinct and separate from other immigration activist groups. She also regularly communicated with many of the hundred or so similar groups established around the country. Simply, the murderous trio used a feigned participation in the immigration law enforcement movement as a convenient veil to cloak some sinister plans to rob drug dealers and coyotes.

David Neiwert knows this, yet he revels in the opportunity to hang as many innocent persons as possible...all the while salivating at the glossy-eyed, delusional thought that such unprofessional behavior will somehow bring him recognition and money.

Not so.

There are professional journalists, and there are "dirty" journalists. David Neiwert, and his counterparts in the Southern Poverty Law Center who cooperated with him in his propaganda efforts, are dirty journalists. The veracity of their writings should be accorded the appropriate skepticism due a propaganda mill.

Sincerely,

Jim Gilchrist, Founder and President, The Minuteman Project
--a multiethnic immigration law enforcement advocacy group--

I'm not going to bother responding to much of this, other than to say I've conversed with Carlucci after his conversation with Gilchrist, and I'm quite certain Gilchrist is lying through his teeth about Mike's views of my reportage. But that should not surprise anyone here.

If Gilchrist were so confident that I reported even a single false fact, he and his attorneys would be lining up the libel suit as we speak. But he's not, because I didn't, and therefore he can't. He's stuck, he knows it, and is now relegated to blowing off steam in my general direction. Which bothers me not even the slightest.

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I don't know if any of you caught this little tidbit the other day over at the SPLC's Hatewatch, who got ahold of Minuteman movement cofounder Jim Gilchrist the day after my AlterNet expose on the Minutemen and Shawna Forde was published. It seems that Gilchrist adamantly denies that he had the conversation with Forde that I reported him having regarding her plans to rip off drug dealers:

Reached by Hatewatch yesterday, Gilchrist flatly denied that he had ever talked to Forde about robbing drug dealers and said she was not even in the car on the way to CWU. “This is bullshit,” Gilchrist said, adding that Forde “was just part of the audience” at the CWU talk. He also said he did not remember Carlucci driving to CWU.

So I guess it comes down to Mike Carlucci's word against Jim Gilchrist's. You probably wouldn't be surprised if I told you that not only does Carlucci have the ability to back up every word, he's only revealed the tip of the iceberg in terms of the depth of the Minutemen's relationship with Forde.

Moreover, it's a Minuteman's word against that of a respected private eye. Considering what we've been learning of late about the fine, upstanding character of the people the nativist border-watch movement attracted -- even beyond Shawna Forde -- that's not a hard choice to make.

First there was Forde. Then there was J.T. Ready, the neo-Nazi border watcher who ended his career by shooting up his girlfriend and her family and then shooting himself.

Now we have Todd Hezlitt, erstwhile companion of Shawna Forde and now a fugitive on the lam with someone's 15-year-old daughter:

You could chalk up some of border militiaman Todd Hezlitt's troubles to bad luck - who knew when he associated with Shawna Forde in 2008 that she would end up killing people the next year and drag his name into the mud?

But his most recent trouble - deputies say the 38-year-old Hezlitt ran away with a 15-year-old girlfriend - seems to be of his own doing.

Hezlitt was arrested in April and accused of two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, a student in the Flowing Wells Unified School District. Then on June 1, the Pima County Sheriff's Department reported that Hezlitt and the girl had both disappeared, apparently together.

He's facing felony charges of sexual conduct with a minor and has violated the terms of his release from jail by contacting the girl, causing an arrest warrant to be issued, Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Sgt. Dawn Barkman said.

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[Above: Sebastien Wielemans' superb documentary on Shawna Forde, A Cycle of Fences.]

As many of you know, I've spent the past couple of years immersing myself in the saga of Brisenia Flores, Shawna Forde, and the Minutemen, largely with the help of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. The end result will be my sixth book, The Last Minutemen, which is due out from NationBooks in April 2013.

I also put together an investigative piece on the demise of the Minutemen and Forde's role in that, which will be included in the book. AlterNet has it, and as you can see, it really is just a preview:

How the Brutal Murders of a Little Girl and Her Father Doomed the Xenophobic Minuteman Movement

I expect the most interesting revelations will involve the conversations that various Minutemen leaders -- who all ran as fast and far away from Shawna Forde as they could, after she was arrested -- had with Forde over the years:

Not only did both Simcox and Gilchrist have extensive dealings with Forde over the years, both repeatedly courted her work and her organization. Simcox didn’t chase Forde out of the MCDC: he begged Forde not to leave his fold. In the case of Gilchrist, one witness to the conversation says that, in 2008, he and Forde discussed her plan to finance the movement by ripping off drug dealers — and that he was enthusiastic about it. Forde not only was fully empowered by Minuteman movement leadership, she was enacting a violent scheme with what she believed was their tacit approval.

Enjoy!

And while you're at it, go read Mark Potok's powerful piece on the demise of the National Alliance over at The Intelligence Report:

Ten years after founder's death, key neo-Nazi movement 'a joke'

Ten years ago, the Alliance had 1,400 carefully selected and clean-cut members, a paid national staff of 17, and great respect in radical-right circles in America and abroad. Its publications, including a newsletter and a journal, set the standard on the extreme right, and its leaders regularly met with their counterparts in Europe. In Florida, it bought radio time and billboard ads. Between dues and income from its white-power music label, it was bringing in almost $1 million a year.

Today, the National Alliance is widely viewed as a joke.

Go read it all.

And yes: The good news is that both of these extremist organizations have completely fallen apart. The bad news is that, like zombies and vampires, they just keep coming back from the dead, usually in mutated forms like the Tea Party.

On Wednesday, some people in Everett -- the hometown of Shawna Forde -- held a vigil in memory of Brisenia Flores, Forde's 9-year-old victim from Arivaca, Arizona. My friend Scott North was there to cover the event:

EVERETT -- They mourned the death of a little girl Wednesday; a child whose life ended three years ago in a robbery orchestrated by an Everett woman she'd never met.

Brisenia Flores was 9. She'd just completed third grade. The principal at her school in Arivaca, Ariz., remembers her smile, her enthusiasm and love for animals.

She died along with her father, Raul "Junior" Flores, because of hateful ideas that took root here, more than 1,600 miles away, a crowd of about 80 human rights activists, elected officials and others were told.

"We stand here as a community to say 'Never again,'" said Meg Winch, who heads the Snohomish County Commission on Human Rights.

This sort of observance is a little unusual, given that Brisenia lived hundreds of miles and several states away. But it was put together by some thoughtful advocates here who recognize that Shawna Forde's career began here, not there:

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We've been saying for a long time that ardent neo-Nazis like J.T. Ready of Arizona are ticking time bombs, walking violent atrocities waiting to happen. Yesterday, he proved the point in a horrifying way:

A border militia leader on Wednesday shot and killed four people at a Gilbert home, including a toddler, before committing suicide, sources said.

Sources identified the shooter as Jason "J.T." Ready, a reputed neo-Nazi who made headlines when he launched a militia movement to patrol the Arizona desert to hunt for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

Authorities have not identified the other victims, but reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Hugo Mederos said the victims were his ex-wife, Lisa; their daughter, Amber; Amber's boyfriend, whose name The Republic is withholding until his next of kin could be notified, and Amber's 18-month-old baby, Lilly.

Mederos, who lives in Tampa, said Ready lived at the home with his girlfriend, Lisa.

Ready was a former Marine who headed the U.S. Border Guard, a militia-style group that routinely performed armed patrols in the southern Arizona desert. Early this year, Ready had formed an exploratory committee for a run as Pinal County sheriff.

In recent years, Ready has been grabbing headlines by organzing vigilante border patrols. Ready's onetime political ally, Russell Pearce, was just chased out of public office by Mesa's voters.

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Number 18 on our countdown is actually a video from 2009, but with Shawna Forde going on trial earlier this year, it resurfaced as one to watch again.

It's a shame her trial didn't get more attention from traditional media outlets. Whether it was the fact that the victims weren't the right color for some media outlets, or a reluctance to shine a bright light on the danger of fringe militia groups, I don't know. But C&L's Dave Neiwert covered the whole trial, up to and including the verdict and sentencing, where Forde finally got what she deserved for shooting a nine-year old child in cold blood.

Rest in peace, Flores family.

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One of the things of which I'm most proud for C&L is our original reporting on this whole underworld of right wing militias and the dangerous violent rhetoric coming out of these circles. Every time I hear someone dismiss some act of violence as a "lone wolf," I encourage them to come here to C&L and search for "Shawna Forde" to see the undercurrents of violence and revolution tied to right wing ideology that no one in the mainstream media discusses.

But our David Neiwert does. In this audio clip, we hear the 911 call of the mother of victim Brisenia Flores. Especially chilling is hearing the shooters return and open fire on her and her shooting back.

David has a book upcoming on Shawna Forde and the Brisenia Flores trial. Look for details to come.