Southern Cross
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
John Marshall Tanner protects a friend from a gang of white supremacists in Charleston
In his long career as a private eye, John Marshall Tanner has stared down a great many evils, but even he cringes at the thought of turning fifty. So when the invitation arrives for his twenty-five-year college reunion, Tanner bites at the chance to feel young again. He expects a weekend of nostalgia, but he will be lucky to get out alive.
At the reunion, Tanner reconnects with an old college buddy, Seth Hartman, now a civil rights lawyer in Charleston, a city more divided by racial intolerance than any in the country. After two decades protecting the rights of the black citizens of South Carolina, Hartman has made his share of enemies, and now they want him dead. To assuage his own guilt over sitting out the fight for civil rights, Tanner journeys to Charleston to do battle with men for whom fear is a weapon and hate is a way of life.
Southern Cross is the 9th book in the John Marshall Tanner Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This ninth John Marshall Tanner novel (after Blood Type ) shows off the witty and trenchant Greenleaf in fine form. This time his middle-aged San Francisco private eye travels to Charleston, S.C., to aid a much admired college friend, civil rights lawyer Seth Hartman, who has received a death warrant from a right-wing hate group, the Alliance for Southern Pride. Marsh, regretful for not having participated in the civil rights movement, hopes his help will serve as a belated contribution to the cause. The portrait of Charleston, a town that still `` lives most of its life in another century,'' is convincing, as is the gallery of intriguing characters: Seth's estranged son Colin, a skinhead associated with ASP; the voluptuous charmer Jane Jean Hendersen, whom Seth has loved since they campaigned in the voter registration drive in 1966; her patriarchal, lawyer father; Alameda Smallings, the young black woman who wants to enter The Palisade, Charleston's all-white military academy; and the menacing field marshall of ASP's Purification Brigade. In doing his best to lance the festering boil of race hatred, Marsh uncovers old and new secrets that cast a harsh light on many, including his former classmate and idol.
