The Emperor of Ocean Park

Stephen L. Carter

As a thriller/mystery, it's pedestrian. Almost every chapter is a cliffhanger, and usually the most melodramatic kind. You can almost hear the orchestra STING! in the background. And I'm not a fan of legal thrillers or mysteries, so I usually skimmed through those parts.

That said, the thriller does drive the book well, and I was surprised at the identity of the culprit -- even if the final scene with him is even more cliched than the chapter cliffhangers.

But let's get to the real reason for the book, and the reason reviewers are praising it: It's about something rarely described in American letters, an upper-class African-American family and their milieu -- and the book does it very well. Moreover, the descriptions of family dynamics, academia (the main character, like Carter, is a law professor), and the Gold Coast haunts of upper-class blacks are terrific. Carter occasionally lapses into paragraph-long lectures or raps on the state of things, and really, those are the best parts of the book.

There's also a nicely used chess metaphor.

One thing I asked when I e-mailed him was how the book came about. He said he'd actually written at least three other volumes on this family, and none of them were to his liking. But that shows, to me, that he's really thought about these people, he knows what makes them tick, and "The Emperor of Ocean Park" is better for their richness.

If you're reading the book because it's a thriller, you'll probably be disappointed. But if you read it for the family, I think you'll enjoy it. Too bad he decided to rely on one form to tell the other's story.