Fans of Stephen L. Carter’s debut fiction, “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” a 2002 best-selling mystery set in the hallowed towers of higher education and the lofty mansions of the black upper class in America, are sure to run out and get a copy of Carter’s newest, “New England White.” They won’t be disappointed.
Carter, himself a professor of law at Yale, had an impressive history in the world of nonfiction before he wrote “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” and he wisely stays close to the same themes of higher- ed perfidy and the rarefied air of black high society in “New England White.”
Again, Carter sets all this against the background of an engrossing whodunit, written with wit and intelligence, as if Carter is having as much fun telling the story as you are reading it. It’s a winning combination.
Two minor characters from the first novel, Lemaster and Julia Carlyle, take center stage in “New England White.” He’s the president of a New England university, and she is a deputy dean in the divinity school.
One snowy night as the Lemasters are returning from a school social function, they slide off a snowy road and discover the body of an economics professor, Kellen Zant. The fly in the ointment is that Zant and Julia had a torrid relationship years ago, before Julia and Lemaster were married.
As things unfold, Julia realizes that Zant still harbored deep feelings for her and has left her clues that may lead to the murderer. At the same time, Julia discovers that Zant had a relationship with Vanessa, the Carlyles’ troubled adolescent daughter. Vanessa and Zant were trying to get to the bottom of a long-ago murder of a faculty member’s daughter.
The young woman’s killing was attributed to a young black man from the wrong side of the tracks who was killed by police trying to arrest him, and the case was closed.
But Zant apparently had reason to believe that the young black man wasn’t involved, that instead the murderer was one of two white university students from powerful families who grew up to bigger and better things – one became president of the United States and the other a U.S. senator, both who now have eyes on the White House. Oh, what a tangled mess.
As Julia probes deeper and deeper into the mystery, she uncovers the little town’s secrets, secrets that upset a lot of wealthy and powerful people.
On the surface, “New England White” is a literate, thoughtful mystery.
But, as he did with “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” Carter infuses the story with his take on wealth and power; the differences between the black and white cultures; and on the effect on normally decent people of the quest for power.
Thankfully, he has toned down the sermonizing that tended to drag down the first novel. But that doesn’t mean “New England White” doesn’t provide Carter’s take on what motivates members of the “darker nation” and the “paler nation,” just that he does it with more literary brio.
For that reason alone, “New England White” is a better novel than the first one, and the first one was awfully good – the professor as student learning his lessons.
Books editor Tom Walker can be reached at 303-954-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
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FICTION
New England White
By Stephen L. Carter
$26.95
