The Best of the Backlist: Stephen L. Carter

The Best of the Backlist

A look at worthy authors you may not know, focusing on their entire collection of in-stock backlist titles. The backlist is a great way to meet some new authors and get a sense of their work.

Stephen L. Carter

If it’s suspense, mystery, history, politics, rogues in government, or shadowy Supreme Court deals, you’ve got several author choices. But if you want a truly well-written political mystery by an insider—a Yale law professor—then you want Stephen L Carter. As a bonus, you’ll also learn much about what Carter terms the “darker nation,” or the privileged African-American society on the East coast, and how they (like so many other upper-crust groups) are actually calling the shots. With Carter, you’ll never be bored, and you’ll never fail to be surprised.

Carter’s first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, is a tight thriller that ties together a family and its travails with political intrigue, all set into motion by the death of a disgraced Supreme Court nominee. Talcott Garland is a good man, a law professor, but his father’s untimely death (as well as the memories of his father’s nationally-televised (non) confirmation hearings) throws Talcott into a life he wishes to avoid: somewhere, somehow there is a story, there was a payoff, there was an election…and only a select group of people Talcott would prefer not to see know the answers. Carter returns to New England, the African-American elite, and the hallowed halls (or hiding places) in academia with New England White. This time an accident leaves a man dead and a powerful couple in the spotlight for the man’s life, and the intersections of his life and theirs. Complicating the picture is that the death is no accident, and the couple’s background is not typical. The powerful couple are one of a handful of carefully-watched African-Americans among whites; any mis-steps on their part (present or past) becomes more important in their small New England town than it should. To say much more would tip the scales for the reader; suffice to say that this thriller is over 600 pages and worth staying up late to read.

The Palace Council includes the wealthy of New York’s African-American community, but when one of their own is murdered, a mysterious council of men become involved. And those men have been involved in much over the years…some 20 years before they became a group of powerbrokers that made deals that sent someone to the White House. And they keep a good eye out on their charges over the years, pulling strings and manipulating the press, the legal system, and their own. When one person threatens to dismantle what the council has done, it becomes impossible to determine what the right thing to do is…for the reader, yes, but for the council as well.

Carter’s latest (due July) takes a different tack: it’s set in the West, involves financial intrigue and shenanigans, and features no members of the prominent East Coast African-American society. Instead, we have Jericho Ainsley. Ainsley is the ultimate government agent: former CIA director, long-term spy, torture expert, conservative gadfly, person at ear of presidents…and now a disgraced old man on the way out, hiding out in his Colorado fortress. He calls (for the final time) Beck DeForde, the young woman who, several years before, caused him to leave his wife, resign his posts, and move to the wild West. While you hear some—but certainly not all—of what caused Beck to fall for Jericho and less of what caused her to leave Jericho 18 months later, it’s clear that Beck knows that she is the one that Jericho counts on, and that she will be the only one to sort out the wild stories. Who is trying to kill whom? What’s with the dog in the driveway? What’s in the garage? Is Jericho really so mad that he believes that all constituencies—the good guys, the bad guys, our guys, their guys—are all out to get him before he starts spilling the secrets of 50 years in government service? As the book goes on, you begin to fear that Jericho is right: maybe no one can be trusted. The cop, the Sherriff, the mysterious helicopter, the librarian, the saloon owner, the former CIA guy, the dutiful daughter, the lawyer, the FBI, the man in the witness protection program, the computer hackers…is it all a grand conspiracy to keep Beck locked up with the dying Jericho and his two antagonistic older daughters while the world fights for Jericho’s secrets? This one will have you guessing until the very last page.