Howell Raines nails it …

… Stripping Atticus Finch of his aura of perfection — The Washington Post.

“Mockingbird” (1960) is one of the monuments in the blossoming of Southern fiction-writing in the 20th century, achieving a success even greater than earlier masterworks by more ambitious writers. As an artist, Lee does not climb to the level of William Faulkner or Robert Penn Warren, but she has earned a spot on the same platform when it comes to definitive renderings of fictional archetypes. And faulting her for damaging a plaster saint of her own making is as myopic as faulting Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom” (1936) for over-emphasizing the tormented psyche of post-Confederate Mississippi or Warren’s “All the King’s Men” (1946) for highlighting Louisiana’s political corruption in creating Willie Stark, the most complex demagogue in modern fiction. Lee has earned admission to the Dixie Pantheon by giving us two views of upper-class whites in a vanishing world, setting “To Kill a Mockingbird” during the lynching epidemic of the 1930s and this new book at the dawn of the civil rights movement in the mid-’50s.

If you haven't read Raines's early novel Whiskey Man, try to find a copy. I reviewed it when it came out and have never forgotten it.