Pariche had urged his friend to go south. How was he to know it would end in murder?Soren Karlsson is in the throes of a premature midlife crisis. His girlfriend has just walked out on him and his increasingly dead-end existence as an associate professor at Berkeley. He needs a break, and an extended trip to Mississippi would appear to be the answer. As he sits, contemplating this, aloft Porter’s Mount, in his beloved Berkshires, he is unaware of what a certain Jedemiah Pariche has been up to, on his behalf, whilst he’s been away. Pariche, a cantankerous individual, with a life-long involvement in civil rights, sees it as his duty to look out for his good friend, especially in regards to the likes of Charlie Wilson, one of the dreaded ‘committee people’ and a person Pariche dismissively refers to as the “acting” dean. In league with his new-found sidekick, a two-bit hoodlum from the streets called Flaxel Boeteng, Wilson is plotting Soren’s downfall. And Soren is now having doubts about the trip too; the state of Mississippi, in the Deep South, appears to be a formidably daunting place and a world away from the cosy liberal life he enjoys out on the west coast. In addition, there is also the safety of his mother, Christina, to consider. As a senior state’s Senator for Massachusetts, she is in the process of investigating a Mafiosi hoodlum well known for violence and the harbouring of grudges. And to cap it all, Soren has commitment issues; something that has seen him lose the only real love of his life. Or so he thinks. For Virginia, now a detective with the Pittsburgh Police, is about to walk back into his life.