Only the Wicked

Long ago, Marshall Spears was a hero of the ballpark. In a time when baseball—and the nation—was segregated, he played in the vaunted Negro Leagues. Decades later, Old Man Spears is living out his days as a fixture in a barbershop in South Central.

One afternoon, PI Ivan Monk—a shop regular—learns that Spears’s former teammate was Kennesaw Riles. From family lore, Monk knows Riles is his cousin who was ostracized for the damning testimony he gave during a controversial murder trial in the ’60s—testimony that put a firebrand civil rights leader behind bars. Before Monk can hear more, Old Man Spears drops dead while listening to a ballgame on the radio. Even stranger, the long missing Riles shows up at the Old Man’s funeral services, and dies soon after.

Monk knows the timing is not a coincidence. He follows the mystery to the Mississippi Delta. There, he unravels the truth behind the murder of two civil rights era activists. Eventually Monk zeroes in on a group of shadowy Mississippi businessmen-turned-philanthropists who may not have reformed their ways as they claim. Far from Los Angeles, the tenacious private eye confronts his own family history as well as a brand of hatred thought to have died with Jim Crow.