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The Emperor of Ocean Park [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "THIS IS the happiest day of my life," burbles my wife of nearly nine years on what will shortly become one of the saddest days..." (more)
Key Phrases: Jack Ziegler, Uncle Jack, Colin Scott (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A complex, smart mystery filled with intrigue, drama, and more than a little danger awaits in Stephen L. Carter's engaging debut novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park. After the funeral of his powerful father (a federal judge whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court became a public scandal), Talcott Garland, an African American law professor at an Ivy League university, is left to unravel the meaning of a cryptic note and carry out "the arrangements" his father left behind. Armed with fortitude and familial devotion--though paranoid of his wife's fidelity--Talcott soon finds himself in an investigation that entangles him with a number of questionable Washington, D.C., denizens, including attorneys and government officials, law professors, the FBI, shady underworld figures, chess masters, and friends and family. All the while Talcott tries not to hurt his attorney wife's chance for a judicial nomination--and their fragile marriage--but the closer he comes to unraveling his father's dark secrets, the more dangerous things become.

Clocking in at over 650 pages, the novel could easily have been streamlined; many of Talcott's thoughts are unnecessarily repeated. But Carter's storytelling skills are adept: tension builds, surprises are genuine, clues are not handed out freely. The prose, while somewhat meandering, can be crisp and insightful, as demonstrated in Carter's description of the misguided paths of young attorneys who sacrifice

all on the altar of career... at last arriving... at their cherished career goals, partnerships, professorships, judgeships, whatever kind of ships they dream of sailing, and then looking around at the angry, empty waters and realizing that they have arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing, and wondering what to do with the rest of their wretched lives.
--Michael Ferch


From Publishers Weekly

Carter, a Yale law professor and distinguished conservative African-American intellectual known for his nonfiction (The Culture of Disbelief), has written a first-rate legal thriller guaranteed to broaden his audience. The narrator, Talcott Garland, is a law professor at Elm Harbor University whose occasional Carteresque editorializing about politics and justice are saved from didacticism by his abiding existential loneliness. The mystery at the heart of the novel stems from Tal's father's disgrace: Judge Oliver Garland (a Robert Bork meets Clarence Thomas type) was nominated by Ronald Reagan for a Supreme Court seat, but brought down in the Senate hearings when it was revealed that he had a friendship with Jack Ziegler, a wild-card former CIA agent now rumored to be an organized crime kingpin. When the judge dies of what looks like a heart attack and Ziegler turns up at his funeral, Tal is initiated into a quest to uncover mysterious "arrangements" his father made in the event of his untimely demise. Various shady entities observe Tal chasing down the judge's clues, which include a cryptic note ("you have little time.... Excelsior! It begins!") and derive from chess strategy. Meanwhile, Talcott is going through a rough patch: his wife, Kimmer, a high-powered attorney, is probably cheating on him, his Elm Harbor law school colleagues are suspicious of him and a fake FBI man is following him around. As Talcott digs deeper, he uncovers a vein of corruption that runs all the way to the top, and his own life becomes threatened. This thriller, which touches electrically on our sexual, racial and religious anxieties, will be the talk of the political in-crowd this summer.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 672 pages
  • Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (June 4, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0375413634
  • ISBN-13: 978-0375413636
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (384 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #470,186 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Stephen L. Carter
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Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
"THIS IS the happiest day of my life," burbles my wife of nearly nine years on what will shortly become one of the saddest days of mine. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Jack Ziegler, Uncle Jack, Colin Scott, Uncle Mal, Elm Harbor, Freeman Bishop, Mallory Corcoran, Marc Hadley, Shepard Street, Dana Worth, Supreme Court, Stuart Land, Father Bishop, Dean Lynda, Sergeant Ames, Oak Bluffs, Theo Mountain, Rob Saltpeter, Wallace Wainwright, Lynda Wyatt, Morris Young, Dee Dee, Double Excelsior, White House, Hobby Road
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Customer Reviews

384 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (384 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Fiction For Chess Players, December 6, 2002
By Virginia Lore "rumtussle" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Stephen L. Carter's The Emperor of Ocean Park has a lot going for it. His main character, Talcott Garland, is a professor of law and a second generation upper-middle class black man. As such, he is positioned to reflect on society from a point of view not often seen in literature. As the novel progresses, racism, classism, political viewpoint and a quest to live one's religious principles are explored as Garland seeks to resolve a chain of events brought about by the sudden death of The Judge, his father.

Characters, while well-rounded and viable, are seen through Garland's miasma of depression and misanthropy, and are not very likable. Garland himself lacks some vital element that makes a main character sympathetic. Although I felt sorry for him, I never really identified with him, and thus couldn't bring myself to sustain my interest in his fate over the course of the entire book. Though this could be described as a murder mystery, at over 600 pages it is much more profound than that. At times, the profundity threatened the movement of the plot. Often Garland had figured things out way ahead of the reader, so that important plot elements were revealed only in retrospect.

While it's evident that Carter is a brilliant strategist, for me, reading The Emperor of Ocean Park was like playing chess with a world-class player--I was too many moves behind and found the experience (while illuminating) more frustrating than entertaining.

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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Black fiction from a middle class perspective, July 29, 2002
Although black influence may be discerned in many strands of modern popular culture, from sports to stand-up comedy, from music to fashion and movies, one couldn't say that this has also been the case for fiction. Professor Carter's book is a welcome first step in populating a compelling plot-driven narrative with characters we haven't heard from before (or at least, not to my knowledge). In "The Emperor of Ocean Park" black university graduates with high-powered jobs and all sorts of material comforts are resolutely center-stage. In Philip Roth's "The Human Stain", the main character must resign his blackness to achieve success and power in the academical world. Carter's characters never resign their race to be successful in the white man's world. The main voice is Talcott Garland's. He is a lawyer in his forties, a professor of law in an ivy-league-ish university, which in spite of Carter's denial in a post-scriptum is a straigth forward rendition of Yale Law School, where the author teaches. Garland is a complex man, not a cypher, surely a cut above the generic "cut-and-paste" renditions typical of modern popular fiction. He is slightly overweight, not very likeable (he is aloof and emotionally remote), very much his father's son. The father, the eponymous "Emperor of Ocean Park", is Oliver Garland, known in the book as "The Judge", a composite of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Robert Bork and famous intellectual Thomas Sowell. A moderately conservative civil rights lawyer, he is appointed to a federal judgeship in the District of Columbia Appelate Court where he moves increasingly to the right. In the Reagan era he is nominated to the Supreme Court, but he must withdraw his candidacy when certain sordid associations become known to the public. He then joins a Washington D.C. firm as counsel and rakes in fat fees as a very popular public speaker. The Judge has shaped his children sometimes in ways he didn't mean to. The first born, Addison, is a rebel who refuses to be subject to his fathers very exacting standards of emotional self-control. His daughter, Mariah, the cleverest of all, has withdrawn from intellectual life to become wife of a rich white banker and mother of a large brood. Talcott has fled the rough and tumble of political life to become a tenured professor, and is stuck with Kimberley, a woman he adores, although she doesn't love him and may be cheating on him. A third daughter, Abby, died long ago, run over by a car that then fled the scene of the accident. This death is the catalyst of all that happens afterwards. The Judge is dead at the beginning of the book, and Talcott is quickly assailed by all sorts of shady figures who are looking for the Judge's arrangements. Talcott has no idea of what this means, and he struggles till the book's very end to find the arrangements and keep himself and his family alive. There is a complex chess problem (whose relevance is perhaps less clearly conveyed than the author intended) and several sub-plots to keep the reader occupied. Those thinking about buying the book should not be dissuaded by its heft. The book is a page turner and it has the right mixture of plot, action and rumination to keep the reader interested. It is also evidence that a book may be compelling without a single overtly sexual set-piece, without unnecessary profanity and without obsessive concern by fashionable slang or luxury good brands. This book will still be readable in fifty years without a special dictionary.

Many people have commented on the detailed rendition on the specifics of middle class lives. The big surprise is that these lives are similar to those of their white counterparts. Middle class blacks are hard working achievers, sometimes hindered by emotional distance and obsessive self-pondering. Perhaps one key point is that this is not the middle class as such that we are regarding, but the upper-middle class, with their large townhouses in Washington D.C. ("the Gold Coast") and their summer places in the Vineyard and the Hamptons.

We should expect this book to be slaughtered in the movie version, with Denzel Washington as Talcott, Morgan Freeman as the Judge, Hale Berry as Kimberley and Angela Basset as Maxine. Gene Hackman would be a good Justice Worthington. Read the book before you see the inevitable movie. It will only spoil the fun if you do otherwise.

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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not What I Expected, July 22, 2002
By Myrna Pennisi "myrnapen" (Wading River, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book has gotten a lot of good press- good reviews and the distinction of being The Today Show's first book club selection. Not a bad introduction to the market. The reality, in this case, doesn't live up to the hype.
Carter's style might be better suited to writing non-fiction than fiction. The book bills itself as a thriller, yet lacks the pace needed to sustain a good thriller. Of course, there's more to this book than the solving of a mystery, for the questions to be answered are woven into an examination of the deceased Judge Oliver Garland's character, politics, and familial role as well as an exploration of love, fidelity, loyalty - all issues of life beyond the solving of a mystery. Maybe that's the problem - Carter bites off so much, that it takes him over 650 pages to digest it all, and ultimately leaves the reader with the feeling of indigestion one gets from overindulging at a buffet rather than with the satiety of having enjoyed a fine meal. There's enough material for two novels - one a mystery, one a character (or issue) analysis. Each character has his own agenda: Older son Addison is the most detached from the family crisis, although he actually knows more than his siblings. Mariah, mother of 5 (to become 6 in the course of the book) has such comforts in her affluent life that she is left with no reponsibilities, a condition which unleashes her active imagination in seeking the answer to the family mystery. Younger son Talcott narrates. He is a complex character with personal issues that sometimes hinder his search. Are we following his relationship with his deceased father, who he refers to formally as "The Judge," or is it his splintering relationship with wife Kimmer, a candidate for a Court of Appeals judgeship? Talcott, Tal, Misha, all the same person, has definite issues with race, despite his black middle class upbringing and his position as professor of law at a New England college. Talcott's issues with his straying and ambitious wife Kimmer are woven into his quest to solve the mystery of "the arrangements" his father left to be found after his death. Kimmer, consumed with her upward move, is resentful that Talcott's search will jeopardize her candidacy and distances herself from him emotionally. Talcott, on the other hand, recognizing the weakness of their relationship, would be willing to continue it since to him, "love is a behavior, not an emotion." These sound like the words of one who can think, but can't emote. Only with his young son is Talcott capable of emotional love.
There is more character development in this novel than in the typical thriller, yet none of the characters are particularly likeable. Addison is too absent, Mariah too pathetic, Tal too much of an intellectual snob. The least likeable one, though, is the deceased Judge Oliver Garland, who set the whole plot in motion, controlling his children's lives even from the grave. 650 pages after the search for "the arrangements" began, I was just happy to have reached the end.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars The Emperor of Ocean Park
This book is a rich and involving mystery. At its heart is a story of profound betrayal and corruption and a man's coming of age in a deeply unsettling and unsettled world... Read more
Published 1 month ago by D. Adam

5.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating
It's is very rare to find an author with a great gift of language and who can also tell an interesting story. In my experience, it is usually one or the other. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Paul Jaocb

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely a college level novel
This isn't a thrillerIt is a mystery, but there is a lot more than the typical whodunit to this. It is full of philosophy, of political commentery, and of religious discussion... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Neal C. Reynolds

4.0 out of 5 stars A fitful life
This is quite a feat of writing. Carter has penned a novel of a family that is successful at most everything, outwardly, but relationships. Read more
Published 2 months ago by G. Henson

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling
I read this book for my mystery book club and I was not disappointed. I found the book compelling, intelligent, and full of interesting situations and characters. Read more
Published 4 months ago by K. E. Fuhrmann

2.0 out of 5 stars Oh, what a tangled web we weave
The tangled web is fine, that's why we read this type of fiction, The fundamental plot is plausible, for me any way. Read more
Published 7 months ago by DM

3.0 out of 5 stars Long read, not worth it
This book of over 600 pages has many interesting insights on the black/white racial situation, but degenerate into a dopey detective yarn in the last 100 pages.
Published 8 months ago by Oscar Firschein

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Audio Book - 4/5 stars.
The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen Carter was a pretty enjoyable audio book. The reader is excellent, and the story managed to hold my interest. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Eclectic Booklover

4.0 out of 5 stars a new look
good read will continue with author;book in fair physical condition. will send on to others.
Published 9 months ago by Walter E. Malhoski

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read Although Not For Everyone
I bought this book about three years ago and gave up on it after about 100 pages. Too much petty family bickering and no real direction. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Gentle Reader

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