The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/24851/the-emperor-of-ocean-park-by-stephen-l-carter

This is an audio book.

I just read (actually, listened to) a very entertaining and, I think, well-done novel entitled The Emperor of Ocean Park,  by Stephen L. Carter. This is basically a mystery, with political, legal, and racial issues mixed up in it. The mystery is pretty good, with the requisite unexpected twist(s) of plot. There are sufficient red herrings. The characters are all very good, to my mind.

One thing about Ocean Park that makes it extra-interesting is that the main character is an upper-middle-class African-American,  a law professor whose father had been a Federal Court of Appeals Judge. The father dies early in the story, and there is suspicion about his death. I won't try to tell the whole thing, I doubt that I could, but it's a really absorbing read. And through all of it, one gets the impression of having a really unique point-of-view, that is, if one does not happen to be an African-American.

More than once I felt that the author beat certain political drums unnecessarily. His issues happen to be abortion (he's against it) and charter schools (he's for them). Since I disagree with his positions, these drumbeats rankled particularly, and I don't think I failed to notice any. My opinion here could be suspect because of my politics, but I think Carter could have left all of that out without harming the story at all. 

If economy is to be celebrated in writing, removing anything that is not necessary to the work is an obvious goal. I wonder, however, if Carter would not disagree with me. He may have felt that including these issues was important to setting the scene or tone, to providing insight into what is (at least to me) a little-known stratum of American Society: the Middle Class, even professional,  African American. 

I keep a blog of (some of) what I read. I don't always write much about a given book, but I try to include enough to at least jog my memory if I'm trying to remember what it was about. This email is going to do double-duty, as I'm going to use it as my blog entry for this book. 

Now that's economy.

EL

The Innocent Man, by John Grisham

This is the only non-fiction work that I have read by John Grisham. I've read many of his novels and have always found them excellent. This book was up to the same standard.

This is the story of Ron Williamson, a man wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Oklahoma in 1987. Williamson was finally freed from prison in 1999, but he was a broken man haunted by serious mental illness, who died at the age of 51.

Grisham tells this story with great feeling and depth, and includes many details of Williamson's life and family. In addition, he tells the stories of other men wrongfully convicted during the same period of time, some of whom are still incarcerated without hope of release. He exposes the sloppy police work and incredibly incompetent prosecutorial procedures that have made Oklahoma the model for injustice and violation of civil rights in the USA.

Grisham makes an excellent case to stop using the death penalty in this country. Our justice system is far too flawed to use this irreversible step, even if one has no other objection to it.