New England White (Carter)

Book Reviews
In the 500-plus pages of New England White, [Carter is] up to more than suspense and the gothic apparatus—including coded anagrams and cracked mirrors—he wields with considerable aplomb. For one thing, he has spiked his thriller with wryly affectionate campus satire, somewhat in the vein of Randall Jarrell's Pictures From an Institution.... The plot of New England White is also sufficiently expansive to allow room for some serious thinking about the progress of "the darker nation" at a time when neither political party has much time for the intractable challenges of race and poverty, and when "as far as white America knew, nobody black ever had money or education before, say, affirmative action."
Christopher Benfey - New York Times

Carter's third-person narration does no favors for his pacing, and we can't help missing Talcott Garland, the earnest protagonist of The Emperor of Ocean Park. Sure, he was prone to pontificating, but he made up for it with his pitiable self-deprecations and fumbling attempts at love that indicated, in the end, he knew about as much as the rest of us. Which is to say, hardly anything. How did Talcott put it? "I have the sense that everybody else shares some crucial bit of knowledge that I have been denied." Don't we all. But let's be honest: No one should read a Carter novel for the mystery. We know by now that the author is only partly concerned with whodunit; he'd rather ponder why any of us does the things we do—especially the bad things. For instance, we know it's wrong to cheat, lie, steal or wound, and yet hardly a day passes in which most of us don't commit at least one of these transgressions on some scale. Human weakness is troubling, fascinating stuff, and Carter has spent much of his career plumbing its depths. He is, after all, an accomplished legal philosopher who has written persuasively about such cherished virtues as civility, integrity and faith. It's perversely pleasurable, then, to find that his fictional creations are reliably rude, dishonest and deliciously sinful.
Jabari Asim - Washington Post

(Starred Review.) Two lesser characters from Yale law professor Carter's bestselling first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002)—husband and wife Lemaster and Julia Carlyle—take center stage in his second, a compelling, literate page-turner that effortlessly blends a gripping whodunit with complex discussions of politics and race in contemporary America. Lemaster, one of the country's most influential African-Americans, has recently begun his tenure as president of a prestigious New England university. As he and Julia, who serves as a dean in the university's divinity school, drive home one snowy night, they happen upon the corpse of Professor Kellen Zant, a brilliant economist as well as Julia's former lover. The murder threatens to shatter not only the Carlyles' marriage but also the fragile psyche of their precocious but troubled daughter, Vanessa—and may affect the upcoming, bitterly contested race for the White House. Julia proves an unlikely but dogged investigator, who looks beyond the official verdict that Zant was killed in a chance encounter with a robber. In the richness of his characters, both major and minor, and the intelligence of his writing, Carter rivals Scott Turow.
Publishers Weekly

When Kellen Zant, a brilliant black economist on the faculty of a New England college, is murdered in an apparent robbery attempt, the entire town of Elm Harbor is thrown into a stir.... Carter follows his highly-acclaimed Emperor of Ocean Park (2002) with another sharp, absorbing look at the black elite, academia, and power politics. Absolutely riveting. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

A high-profile murder unsettles a New England college town in this eventful second novel from Carter. Economics professor and tireless lothario Kellen Zant, a charismatic black academic celebrity whose romantic conquests acknowledge no limits, is found dead on a remote back road. Suspicion falls among Zant's former lovers and their mates, his colleagues and the wealthy clients who shelled out big bucks for his advice—and even the (unnamed) college's president Lemaster Carlyle and his wife Julia (herself one of Zant's former paramours). The Carlyles were minor figures in Carter's debut novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park , but they occupy center stage in this beefy, neatly constructed melodrama, which distributes clues and juggles suspects with Grisham-like energy and efficiency. We're briskly introduced to the insular little world of the campus, a racially and ethnically mixed utopia whose sleek occupants nevertheless have secrets aplenty to conceal. And Carter expands the novel's scope with impressive assurance, as Zant's murder is connected to another (ostensibly accidental) death; the surpassingly odd behavior of the Carlyles' teenaged daughter Vanessa (who torches her dad's Mercedes for no discernible reason); and the 30-year-old murder of a white woman student (with which Vanessa has become obsessed), shock waves from which may reach as far as the White House—presently occupied by Lemaster's former college roommate. The embattled Julia Carlyle, a busy mother of four who's also dean of the college's divinity school, is obliged to perform some fairly intricate detective work of her own, as persons of interest and their histories glimpsedin old mirrors (a crucial clue) prove to be nearer than they appear. An overload of exposition and a truckload of involved characters aside, this is a virtually irresistible-and highly intelligent-thriller. Carter strikes again.
Kirkus Reviews