The Emporer of the Ocean - Stephen L Carter

The Emperor of Ocean Park took a little while to grab me, but eventually I got into it.

The story is a mystery, which isn't normally my kind of thing. It starts out slowly with the protagonist, Talcott Garland, with is wife and child getting the news that his father, a once famous, then controversial, and ultimately humiliated former judge has died. The novel spends some time establishing the kind of marriage Talcott has, his love for his son, and the difficulty of having been the child of the once lauded, conservative, African American judge, who was publicly disgraced. Cleary, there is a lot going on. Not only that, Talcott is a law professor and his wife is up for a judge appointment. One can only assume that now that the judge is dead, more about the circumstances that ended in his disgrace will come to light, and they do. However, they are not what you would expect.

One of the things that seemed funny to me is how dense Talcott sometimes seemed in this novel. Clues are dropping all over him about what might be going on and what might be at stake and generally speaking he has to be hit over the head with it before he gets it, but then I remembered he's not a super spy. He is just a guy, a law professor with a struggling marriage and a once famous, now dead father. He isn't suppose to know how to deal with intrigue and drama outside of his little academic nest.

Eventually, the mystery starts to unravel and little is as it seems. Although Talcott's father appears to have died of a heart attack, his sister believes there has been foul play. Talcott asks a few questions trying to appease his sister and suddenly finds himself wading in a much deeper pool than he expected. It starts to drive him a little nuts. He gets a little paranoid and takes unnecessary risks in a way that seemed to me to be totally believable. His ruminations on race and gender issues as he muddles his way through are interesting and not too preachy.

Ultimately, the novel is longer than it needed to be. There are ideas repeated that don't have to be and sometimes the build up takes longer than it needs to on the way to the next clue. Once in a while you want to shake Talcott and say COME ON, but I liked the novel on the whole.