Both Carlyles find connection in their elite black secret clubs: the Ladybugs (for her) and Empyreals (for him). What gives Carter's novels their unique appeal is his ability to open up the emotional world of black Americans operating at the highest levels of government, society and education but always remaining part of "the darker nation." It can be a stress-filled existence: the offhand racial slight, the sense of isolation, the difficulty of raising black children in all-white schools, the obligation to help others. Many novelists have done murder within the groves of academe. (They were featured in Emperor, but reading that book is not a requirement for enjoying this one.)
The couple are black, like Zant Lemaster is the newly appointed president of the university, and Julia is a Divinity School dean. Zant's body is found one snowy night by Lemaster and Julia Carlyle. Many people had reason to kill Zant, a womanizing charmer with a gift for numbers and a knack for self-promotion, and better reasons for hiding it. The plot centers on who murdered a brilliant professor of economics named Kellen Zant. Carter dishes on everything: the entitled students who consider themselves above the law the aggressive, rich alums who wield donations as weaponry the soft-voiced, infighting administrators the abstract-thinking professors. (In an author's note, Carter again insists it's "not a thinly disguised New Haven.") (His two-novel deal earned him $4.2 million.) In his new novel, he returns to the same New England city, Elm Harbor, and its ultra-prestigious university, the alma mater of U.S.
Plus, there's a discreet but zesty dollop of contrarian thinking about religion and morality.Ĭarter is a longtime law professor at Yale whose 2002 debut novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, was a best seller. Carter's meaty new novel, New England White,defines the perfect smart summer read.įeaturing political intrigue and two murders in need of solving, White delivers all sorts of secret stuff about Ivy League campuses and black America's aristocracy.
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