Palace Council

Rating NR Genre thriller Author Stephen L. Carter Publisher Knopf

Stephen Carter's Palace Council is structured as a political thriller, weaving a complicated knot of conspiracy from 50s Harlem to 70s Vietnam, but in the end it is a love story.  Eddie Wesley Jr., up-and-coming Harlem writer, loves young Aurelia Treene, but he is not up and coming enough to overcome the match-making machine of the Harlem Czarinas, who match eligible young Aurelia with Kevin Garland, heir to the fortune of the most prominent family in Harlem.  Never one to behave properly, Eddie storms out of the engagement party and trips over the corpse of Philmont Castle, a powerful white lawyer who is part of a larger conspiracy known as the Palace Council.  Castle has this in common with most of the characters in the novel.  On her honeymoon, Aurelia becomes suspicious and worried about Kevin's constant disappearances and late returns, especially after he mutters about cleaning up Castle's mess.  United by a common conspiracy to unravel, Eddie and Aurelia circle each other through time and place as the novel skips along, comparing notes and cashing in favors on the other's behalf. 

In a seemingly unrelated tragedy, Eddie's sister Junie appears to be abducted from her car on her way to Chicago.  Of course, nothing in this novel's world of upper-class conspiracy is unrelated, and Eddie's investigation into his sister's whereabouts connects back to the Palace Council and their support of militant civil rights groups, particularly one called Jewel Agony.  

Eddie's writing career rises meteorically, giving him useful contacts for his investigation along the way.  In fact, his life reads like a who's who of the 50s and 60s.  He seeks advice from Langston Hughes, writes speeches for John F. Kennedy, and calls in favors, through Aurelia, from Richard Nixon.  He is also frequently harassed and blackmailed by J. Edgar Hoover, for information on both his sister and President Kennedy. 

The frequent cameos by historical figures start as a charming means of delivering a sense of place, as we see Langston Hughes and Harry Belafonte milling about at Harlem society parties.  But as the novel plods along, frequent appearances by Hughes, Hoover, more than a few Kennedys, and “Dick” Nixon begin to make the novel feel like a sight-seeing tour of the 60s.  And a slow tour at that.  The novel moves forward in fits and starts, sometimes hours, sometimes half a year, from one chapter to the next.  Carter quickly catches the reader up, but usually very little has changed. 

Clues range from the mundane - a note with “His Wife Has It” - to the literary - Paradise Lost is your homework assignment, dear reader - but they simply do not come quickly enough.  As enticing as the conspiracy is as we watch Eddie begin his investigation, by the time the trail ends nearly 500 pages later, the bread crumbs are decidedly stale.  The settings, particularly Harlem, are beautifully realized and compelling, but the plot works against them by either overwhelming them or distracting from them.  Overall, this novel combines a compelling mystery with a fascinating series of settings, but drags the pacing out so much that by the time it resolves, the reader may have wandered off.