Carter has a genuine and admirable talent. The reader does not feel the cheapness or emptiness that can accompany reading such depictions, the exploitative flavor. Yet Stephen Carter’s work is engaging for his ability to suggest the kind of characters who can create or earn and hold and handle great wealth and power. However, near the story’s end, I found the leading character’s response to a fatal event too lacking in affect-his coolness then is unlikely, not quite human, even for someone whose work has required monstrous calculations.

Carter’s use of language (in narrative and dialogue) is at a high-level with only of few points of stiffness. The novel moves fast through conversations and acts, featuring intriguing characters, and often there is believable emotional weight as well as interesting political speculations. Where is the evidence the great man has and what will he do with it? They are all under surveillance, and in danger. His daughters are there, one of them very hostile. His former lover, a young woman, returns to attend his death bed.

Carter’s novel Jericho’s Fall is about an aging, seemingly ill government man, now retired, who threatens to reveal state secrets and financial secrets.

That corresponds to the paranoia of a victimized minority as well as the political analysis of certain radicals. His books are intelligent entertainments and yet what is surprising, thrilling, and troubling is the degree to which conspiracies and conspiracy theories are at the core of these books. I liked Stephen Carter’s first three fiction novels, The Emperor of Ocean Park, New England White, and Palace Council, novels that could be considered a trilogy, as they shared some of the same characters, focusing on a segment of educated and wealthy African-Americans we do not see much of in literature.

Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter