I thought EC Don had already written about this book, but a search of the blog came up with nothing, so I’ll give you a brief review. This is one of the Alex Cross series which is co-written by James Patterson and Richard Dilallo. The last book I reported about took place in 1907, and this one takes place in 1906. Unlike Cussler’s Wrecker, this was a very good book. I felt like I was reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The plot has to do with a white man who was raised in podunk Eudora, Mississippi, has gotten a Harvard law education, and then hooked up with Teddy Roosevelt at the Battle of Bunker Hill in the Spanish-American War. The lawyer, Benjamin Corbett, ends up in D.C., and he is having his own marital troubles because he won’t give up protecting the downtrodden. That means he is not making money on his cases, and his wife wants a better life circumstance. It is then that Teddy decides to send Ben down to Eudora to look into the surge in lynchings that has been going on in the south. Risking his marriage coming to an end, Ben goes back to his home town where he has not been in six years since the death of his mother. His father is still alive and working there, but Ben and his father are estranged. Ben investigates the ongoing lynchings while encountering so many of the people he remembers from childhood. He moves in and out of the black community in the “Quarters,” and the white community in the rest of Eudora, developing very interesting characters in all places. I am rating this one at the top of my list for recommendations.
West Coast Don
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