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.