Detective Alex Cross is thwarted at every turn while he attempts to investigate the abduction of the president's son and daughter and also discovers a deadly contagion released in the capital's water supply that foreshadows a larger, more devastating attack.

"In March 1931, two white women stepped from a boxcar in Paint Rock, Alabama to make a shocking accusation: they had been raped by nine black teenagers on the train. So began one of the most significant legal fights of the twentieth century. The trials of the nine young men would draw North and South into their sharpest conflict since the Civil War, yield two momentous Supreme Court decisions and give birth to the civil rights movement."--Container....