By all accounts, the bludgeoning murder in 1949 of a taxi driver by brothers George and Rufus Hamilton was a slug-ugly" crime. George and Rue were hanged for it. Repelled and intrigued by his ancestral cousins' deeds, George Elliott Clarke uncovered a story of violence, poverty and shame — a story that led first to the Governor General's Award–winning Execution Poems and culminated in Clarke's brilliant and darkly comic debut novel.

Named an editor's choice by The Bookseller in the UK, George & Rue is a book about death that brims with fierce vitality and the sensual, rhythmic beauty that so often defines Clarke's writing.