New Orleans lawyer Danny Chaisson is contacted by a weathy real estate developer to help with a problem in St. Tammany parish that is quickly getting out of control. The real estate company had hoped to begin building a high-end shopping center and expensive housing on a tract of land the company had purchased several years prior but a recent incident on the land has brought the entire project to a halt. A slave burying ground, not marked on any maps of the area but well-known by the local residents of St. Tammany parish, has become a hangout for a group of white teens on Friday nights. During a night of heavy drinking the boys attack an elderly black man who lived near the cemetery. Caryl Jackson had tried on many occasions to make the boys leave and to stop vandalizing the headstones but on this night they hit him with a shovel and threw a piece of headstone at him, hitting him in the head. As Caryl lies in a coma at the hospital Danny Chaisson must find a way to keep any of the blame from falling on his client. Danny quickly becomes embroiled in the local racial tensions and a good-old-boy sheriff who seems reluctant to bring 4 white boys to trial for attacking a black man. The leader of the 4 boys, Randy, is the star quarterback of the highschool football team and the son of one of the area's high ranking KKK members. When one of the boys, Bobby, is found murdered, the sheriff quickly arrests Caryl's grandson for the killing. In a town teeming with racial unrest Danny begins to feel that his allegiance should not lie with his client but with the Jackson family. As more bodies begin to pile up a dark, sinister secret from 20 years ago will put many more lives in danger, including that of Danny himself.

This is a book that has been lingering on my TBR for quite a few years and I am so glad that I finally got to it. What a suspenseful ride it was. The characters are well developed, the good ones and the bad ones alike, and I really pulled for Danny to bring the truth to light. My only quibble with the whole book is that the evil characters are almost just too evil to be believable. It is hard to imagine that people can go through life with so much hate in their hearts towards other human beings. I don't think this author has written many books but I will certainly be searching them out.
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Fast moving plot but too many stereotypes of racial tension in the south. Nonetheless, a good read. ( )

Complex and interesting mystery involving racial attitudes in small town Louisiana. A New Orleans developer finds out the land for which he has plans holds a slave burying ground. As he puts the project on hold, locals at the rural site take matters into their own hands, an elderly black man is fatally wounded, white cops don't pursue leads pointing to white teens, another murder blamed on a black teen. Danny Chaisson is in the middle, confronting issues, trying to bring the truth to light. He gets more than he bargained for--but he seems to have a pattern of doing just that.
Stereotypical relationships: Jabril is written in as Chaisson's sidekick, a black man to save the white lawyer when things get tough, provide some dialogue. Etta, newly widow, takes Danny & his wife in, cooking for them & offering Mickie a place to stay "like family", stands around cooking sausages & dirty rice for successive groups of visitors.
Reminds me a lot of James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series. ( )