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Darryl Billups calls Baltimore "the world's biggest country town," and he's drawn to it like a magnet. He gained sensational success as a crime reporter for the (fictional) Baltimore Herald, where he exposed the neo-Nazi who tried to blow up the NAACP headquarters, an event chronicled in Up Jumped the Devil. Following this stint, Billups tried his luck as a reporter in New York. But the offer of a management job at the Herald and a $15,000 raise has brought him back to Baltimore, where he remains the hottest thing to hit that town since the Homicide television series. Darryl's hopes for a quiet life are disturbed when someone begins killing people--all young, all African American, all upwardly mobile--and decorating their faces with decals of the Confederate flag. The tough old police detective who worked with him on the NAACP bombing case lets Darryl break the story to the country. Meanwhile, the killer--(who incidentally gets turned on by Jerry Springer)--gradually emerges from the shadows complete with a catalog of frightening surprises. The author knows his Baltimore, and he knows the inner-workings of a journalist's mind. He makes Darryl a most human and very interesting kind of hero. --Dick Adler
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