lynching

In the deep south, racial disparity was a terrible, normative truth that painted the white picket fences of Mississippi with a coat of vile ignorance. Detective Alex Cross, a character invented in the mind of James Patterson, was stepping outside his comfort zone in Washington, D.C., to infiltrate the disturbing tendrils of this prejudice and iniquity. This venture was taking him to the quaint township of Belvedere, a place he had never heard of, where the Mississippi river's charm belied the ugly undercurrent of racial hatred that was teeming beneath its surface.