Customer Reviews

The White League

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The editorial reviews give enough of a synopsis of the plot of this fine thriller, so I will not go over that territory and give anything away. The characters are complex and real, the historical underpinning dating back to the Reconstruction era fascinating, the writing clear and forceful. Kudos to the author.

A well-written thought-provoking thriller with a believable and logical ending. Impossible to put down. My favorite book in a long time. I thought Nelson Demile's Nightfall and Vince Flynn's Memorial Day were teriffic.This one is right up there with them, although entirely different genre, but all three make you think.

A complete shot-in-the-dark to me was "The White League" by Thomas Zigal. My wife was given a Uncorrected Proof copy of this book by the author himself at the Louisiana Book Festival in 2004. Zigal is known for the Kurt Muller mystery series, but has roots in Louisiana and Texas. This well-written book tells the story of Paul Blanchard, a coffee company executive forced to come to grips with his past as an old frat buddy and "reformed" racist pushes him for support in a campaign for governor. The "White League" of the title was a powerful, white-supremacist organization of New Orleans that effectively ended the Reconstruction in Louisiana in 1874. The question posed by the protagonist and the book is "does the White League still operate today?" (or at least in 1990 when the novel is set). I raced right through this book; it's somewhat similar to a Grisham novel, but without a lawyer hero, and with better depictions of local color.

Well-written and well-plotted, this novel is set in New Orleans with a long history of tense relations between its majority black and minority elite white citizens. The main character has a guilty secret and is esponsible for another man's imprisonment for the death of a woman. He is white and ther other man is black. The main character learns of the White League, and then his own forebears' history of membership in the racist group. The conclusion is a satisfying resolution of some of the conflicts. I enjoyed reading it.