RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2008
PAGES: 528
SRP: $26.95

The history of America and its colorful citizens, past and present, who have all lived on various levels of the country’s class structure, and the dynamics that play out within the socio-political fabric, is fertile ground for any author. Given the many thrilling, flamboyant true life political events and stories that played out over a thirty year period from the 1950s to the 1970s, you can’t fault an author for tapping into an already established goldmine to construct the foundation for a tale of political intrigue, conspiracy, and social interpretation. That’s exactly what author Stephen L. Carter does in his recently released third novel, Palace Council. However, the non-fictional foundation provides the support for a fictionalized account of the lives and interactions of prominent and affluent people and families so deeply associated with the three decades through the eyes and experiences of its main character - Richard Nixon, LBJ, the Kennedy clan, J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Luther King... even Harry Belafonte. Palace Council thrillingly and intellectually navigates from high-society Harlem through the White House, the Vietnam War, and Watergate past the demonstrators of Kent State to Camp David and beyond.

If you’ve ever traveled to Cape Cod and stood on the shores in Falmouth, looking across Nantucket Sound at the woods of Martha’s Vineyard, wondering what mysterious political events have played out over the years, Palace Council is rooted in the same type of curiosity. The book’s lead character, popular writer Eddie Wesley, claws his way through Harlem’s high-society, bound by the organic limitations of his pedigree as the son of a respected preacher but aided by the prominent connections of his mother. Although given entrance to Harlem’s upper crust landscape, Eddie finds himself the victim of a class hierarchy of purebred elites of which he’s not a natural extension. Unfortunately, that’s what a degree from Amherst and undergraduate years at Brown will do for a guy. One of the book’s most poignant lines strikes to the very heart of both the early era of the story’s setting and the set-up of Eddie Wesley through the character’s early work as a writer, "At the end, the boy got down on his knees, folded his hands, and vowed that, whatever he turned out to be when he grew up, he would never be a Negro." Beyond the racial divide, it’s the book’s vivid high-society Cotton Club tone that sets the effective stage for a deeply complex and conspiratorial mystery.

In love with lovely Aurelia Treene, who’s about to marry Kevin Garland, son of the most affluent family in town, Eddie storms out of her engagement party only to discover the body of prominent Wall Street attorney Philmont Castle, which sparks Eddie’s search to solve the murder and mystery of the Palace Council. A secret order of well-to-do power players, the Palace Council becomes relevant to Eddie’s life in so many unexpected ways, as he learns Garland is a Council member plus an old friend with his sister, Junie, entangled in the complexity of it all. As the plot thickens, Eddie learns he might also have newly formed blood connections to the Palace Council, which only deepens the conflict. The clues to the murder mystery take Eddie from Harlem to Saigon and link him through the White House and Richard Nixon to some of the most significant events of the 1960s and 70s. Carter’s Palace Council is very much a Forrest Gump meets The Da Vinci Code type thriller.

Stephen L. Carter is a great writer. I’m amazed at his ability to weave so many busy elements through a narrative without getting lost in a sea of historical events, characters, relationships, and symbolism within such a complex political mystery. Although Carter’s velocity is slow and much too methodical at times, which might be asking too much of today’s Ritalin, attention deprived readers, it’s his ability to temper fact with fiction while creating both memorable characters and a compelling mystery that makes Palace Council work as a final product. That’s the simplicity of Palace Council. On a deeper, more intellectual level, Carter skillfully tackles a number of issues that few authors would be able to combine with historical backdrop facts, including racial segregation, the power of feminism, the division of social class structures, the power within politics, the advantages of wealth and the corruption of money, familial loyalties, violence and war, the necessity of demonstration, duty to oneself and career, the complexity of marriage, determination, perseverance, and a search for truth. Even still, Carter is also able to show how all of them aren’t clearly defined and subject to a variety of life’s unexpected variables.

At 528 pages, Palace Council is a smart thriller with an engaging and intelligent mystery that’s only enhanced by Stephen Carter’s flair for using non-fiction history to give the fiction a necessary level of imaginative revisionist authenticity. Carter’s main drawback in pacing and plodding, however, is similar to a specific phase of Eddie Wesley’s interesting journey, "For a decade and a half he had collected facts, building and building until he could finally present his thesis." Still, despite it excessive nature, it’s refreshing to read something so intelligent in an age when the product of "dumbing down of America" is such a valuable commodity.