Alex Cross's Trial: (Alex Cross 15) - Tapa dura

While you wait for the next exciting installment in the Alex Cross series, I, Alex Cross (published November 2009 by Century), get your hands on a new book written by Alex Cross himself!

Ben Corbett is a brilliant young lawyer in early-twentieth-century Washington DC. Yet he is a disappointment to his wife and father, who believe he wastes his talents by doing poorly-paid and thankless work helping the poor and downtrodden.

One day, out of the blue, he receives a private invitation to the White House. President Theodore Roosevelt has personally selected Ben to help him investigate rumours of lynchings and a re-emergence of the outlawed Ku Klux Klan in Ben's own hometown of Eudora, Mississippi. Ben accepts the mission handed to him and is given the name of a man in Eudora who will help him in this covert operation - the man's name is Abraham Cross, great-uncle of Alex.

As Ben delves into the murky depths of racial hatred that hide beneath the surface of this seemingly sleepy Southern town, people become suspicious of what he is trying to do, and make it very clear to Ben what he is risking if he continues. Ben must decide if he is willing to lose old friends, his family, maybe even his life, for the cause he believes in.

In his quest to bring about justice for the tortured and tormented black community of Eudora, Ben will have to take on the biggest, most difficult, and most dangerous trial of his life. But can one man fight an entire town, an entire state that is stuck in the past and willing to go to any lengths to halt change and the coming of a future that they desperately fear?

A PREFACE TO TRIAL

By Alex Cross

A few months after I hunted a vicious killer named The Tiger halfway around the world, I began to think seriously about a book I had been wanting to write for years. I even had the title for it, Trial. The previous book I'd written was about the role of forensic psychology in the capture of the serial killer Gary Soneji. Trial would be very different, and in some ways, even more terrifying.

What I now feel compelled to write about took place in Mississippi during the time that Theodore Roosevelt was President, the early part of the twentieth century. I believe it is a story that helps illuminate why so many black people are angry, hurt, and lost in this country, even today. I also think it is important to keep this story alive for my family, and hopefully, for yours.

The main character is a man my grandmother knew here in Washington, a smart and courageous lawyer named Ben Corbett. It is our good fortune that Corbett kept first-person journals of his incredible experiences, including a trial that took place in Eudora, Mississippi. A few years before he died, Mr. Corbett gave those journals to my cousin Moody. Eventually they wound up in the hands of my grandmother. My suspicion is that what happened in Mississippi was too personal and painful for Corbett to turn into a book. But I have come to believe there has never been a better time for this story to be told.

Alex Cross [right justified]