Lincoln Rhyme is white

Page 121.

His complexion is "as pale as the rookie Polaski's blond hair".

The Twelfth Card.

All the same, Denzel Washington was a good choice.

Jeffrey Deaver, again

The Twelfth Card.

Deaver is not stupid.

But he retails the stupid "three fifths of a man" whine.

It would have been better for the slaves had they not been counted at all.

See the 14th Amendment, Section 2.

Nay, had their number been subtracted from the state population in determining representation in the House, that would have been better, yet.

Deaver's characters stupidly compare this to the full counting of women, as disenfranchised as slaves.

Maybe Deaver is stupid, and doesn't see that while disenfranchisement of women favored males equally in all states disenfranchisement of slaves favored, in representation in the House, because slaves were counted at all, the power of voters in slave states over free.

And that diminished the power of those who would protect slaves or inhibit the power of their owners or, ultimately, abolish slavery.

A scary vision

Toward the end of Jeffery Deaver's The Skin Collector, Rhyme reflects that, though Muslim terrorism in the US gets all the press and generates the outrage, the Christian, racist, white male supremacist and bitterly Nativist radical right has always been a much greater policing problem, causing more violence and bloodshed.

You can't read the last hundred pages or so without finding the rise of Trump and Trumpism all the more horrifying.

See this on Kansas, Fox News, and terrorism.

If the point was at least in part to discourage immigration or to encourage immigrants to leave, this plot to commit hate crimes was indeed a terrorist plot.