The author is Steven H Richardson, a retired Lieutenant who spent his law enforcement career with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office of Duval County, Florida.

HOLDING HIS HANDS HIGH IN THE AIR, JUNIOR YELLED OUT TO THE DARKNESS, "ROT IN HELL YOU MURDERING BASTARD." SPITTING ON THE BODY AS IT LAY IN THE COLD MUD, DALE B. MCCORKLE, II THOUGHT TO HIMSELF, A DESERVING DEATH FOR A THIEF WHO TAKES A LIFE. BOTH DIED IN THE WOODS, ONE BY THE HAND OF A FRIEND, THE OTHER BY THE HAND OF FATE.

Crossing The Chalk Line is closer to reality than fiction in describing what happens when police do the wrong thing for the right reasons. 

:Crossing the Chalk Line uses southern colloquialism to enhance cultural distinctions, enhance reality and to stimulate interest. The reader gets twisted through a sequence of events leading one to question what police can
and cannot do.

When Deputy Mark Jacobs finds his training officer lying dead in the panhandle mud, he must patiently wait for the criminal justice system to prosecute the murderer. Unable to place the murderer at the crime scene, the prosecutor is forced to release the murderer back into the Olustee communities.

Within months the body of another murder victim is discovered in the woods. Sure of the murderer's identity, two of Olustee's finest deputies decide if they want to cross the chalk line for sure, quick justice.

The deputies know that inside the murderer's house is all the evidence they need to identify the killer. Citizens call it personal belongings. Police call it evidence. They know they can put the killer at any crime scene in the country with the evidence at the house. Mark tells his partner, Sidney, "I even had him stand in the dirt outside the back of his house so you could get his footprints."