Book information

Palace Council

• By Stephen L. Carter
• Knopf
• $26

Several years ago, Yale law professor and best-selling novelist Stephen L. Carter introduced the world of literature to the elite of the "darker nation" in his first two suspense novels. However, unlike "The Emperor of Ocean Park" and "New England White," which were both set in present day, "Palace Council" has a broad historical scope.

At the core of this novel, political intrigue, dark secrets, loyalties and betrayals span the 1950s, continuing through the tumultuous unrest of the '60s to climax at the end of the Nixon administration.

The main character, Eddie Wesley, a black writer of fiction and nonfiction, finds himself embroiled in a controversy of immense magnitude. After he accidentally stumbles upon the murdered corpse of a Wall Street attorney with known connections to the upper-class families of Harlem, a series of events -- including more deaths and a scientist's suicide -- convince Wesley that his sister's involvement with a militant black organization, and her subsequent disappearance, are all related.

Meanwhile Wesley pines for his true love, who broke off with him to marry a Harlem man Wesley suspects of being next in line to inherit the leadership of a secret organization of wealthy businessmen and power-welding politicians.

During the course of Wesley's 20-year obsessive search to uncover the truth about the "Palace Council" and their hidden agenda, Joe and John Kennedy, poet Langston Hughes, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and President Richard Nixon all play significant roles.

Carter crafts this bold undertaking by supplying a back story that is lengthy and complex, and throughout the novel more action transpires inside the minds of his characters than on the stages he creates.

Yet the author's writing style is compelling enough to have me turning the pages, curious to see what the climax and resolution of this socially poignant tale would be.