Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor's New Clothes. Or what I did with my $4 million.
Review: Yale law professor Stephen Clark writes a first novel about an Ivy Leauge law professor and collects a $4 million dollar advance for his effort. A political suspense thriller is set in the Northest's African-American elite."The Emperor of Ocean Park" is more than a novel of suspense and intrigue, it's a story of families and the things that draw them together and utimately rip them apart. Of the secrets they keep from one another and the legacies they pass from generation to generation. Mr. Carter tells us about relationships, both professional and marital; destroyed by ambition. Religion also plays a role as well.The author suggests we let forgiveness come before revenge. An intricate plot, one full of well developed characters, scenes, and numerous multi-layered conspiracies make "The Emperor of Ocean Park" a must read on everyone's summer book list. Cammy Diaz A @ L
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: This is one of the best novels I have read in the past several years, and I read a lot. Mr. Carter is is an excellent intelligent wordsmith. The characters are real. The thoughts expressed are challenging. The story is a page turner that keeps you up long after you should have gone to bed. It is a pleasure to find a new author as talented as Mr. Carter. I look forward to his next book. Enjoyment of any book is pretty subjective, but ...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Gripping! Fun!
Review: This is not the genre I ordinarily go for, however, given my familiarity with the author's non-fiction works and reputation, I found myself intrigued. Once I started I literally could not put the book down until I finished. Mr. Carter throws so many wrinkles, so many curves and also, I think, so many clues that I couldn't put the book down until I knew the conclusive answers. Not only did I find the book entertaining and rather quick to read....I found the writing style, the use of language, the description and development of characters absolutely incredible. In addition to a compelling story line, Mr. Carter provides provocative social commentary as well as an interesting sketch on the complexity of humanity.....The main character was extremely real to me and particularly fragile...(though often I wanted to smack him for his paranoia, but then,could you really blame him?) I highly recommend this book. Its excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic novel
Review: This novel was worth everything, a true page turner.
Rating: 
Summary: Too long by far
Review: I was excited to get my hands on this book and read the opening with alacrity. By the time I got 150 pages in, though, I knew I was in for a long haul. The social commentary is incisive and fresh. Even if you don't agree with Carter's observations, it's hard to find fault with their fairness. The problem is that by the midpoint of the book, he is reduced to repeating himself, and the reader is left with the threadbare thriller plot for company. The closer I got to the ending, the more I skimmed. I am convinced that 200 pages of this book could have been cut. As it was, I was mostly thrilled to finish the book because it allowed me to go on to a new one.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly well-written and thoughtful
Review: This book was incredibly well-written and thoughtful. The organization was seamless and truly professional. The characters came across as true to life and believable. I would recommend it highly to any intelligent reader, as it provides both an interesting plot and a lot of fleeting insight into the human experience. The ending was a bit challenging, however. The moral to the story seems to be that if an individual finds out that Senators and cabinet members are corrupt and that individual has the ability to expose them, that person should instead participate in the cover-up of their crimes. Seems to me that there is a substantial body of law that would argue otherwise, and that
a citizen has a duty under common law as well to expose "evildoers." (Can't remember the name of that Supreme Court decision, however.) I suppose a more commercial ending would have been for Prof. Garland to give the disk to the Washington Post and become a hero...and to then have his wife come back to him so that they could end the book happily ever after. (Or she could want to reunite and then he could reject her...also a nice twist.) I don't know if future books are planned but if so I would certainly read them. With the way this book ends, Mr. Garland and his sister Mariah would be well-set up to solve a crime in the intriguing setting of Darien, Connecticut - thus solving his sister's "ennui." Perhaps if the author is too busy to do a second book he could find a co-author to work with to do most of the grunt work. It would be easy to kill off Mariah's gardener, for example, and then find out that he was an illegal immigrant from Mexco or Central America, and use the background of illegal immigrant history in the U.S. to enlighten the plot. As to other books that I would recommend to readers who enjoyed this book, I would suggest "Leaps of Faith" by Rachel Kranz, although it is not in the same mystery/thriller genre, the writing is at the same high level.
Rating: 
Summary: An engrossing read
Review: I came to this book without having read much about it in advance (truth be told, I found it on the "New Fiction" shelf at the local library -- the title caught my eye). Carter's literary style is not groundbreaking, true, but first and foremost this book is a thriller, and an intelligent one at that. I found it hard to put down, even though I agree with some readers that the book could've lost a hundred pages or so and not been harmed much. OK, I guess I'd say this is a flawed book, but the flaws somehow don't ultimately detract from its being enjoyed. If you're someone who has enjoyed longish books that succeed in spite of -- and at times, somehow, *because* of -- their seeming shortcomings (e.g., Dreiser's "An American Tragedy," Hoeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow," Folsom's "The Day After Tomorrow" or even Eco's "The Name of the Rose"), then you'll probably enjoy this one, too. There's a lot going on between these two covers. The book's cumulative effect is, in the end, more profound -- and more disconcerting -- than your average mystery/suspense novel's. I'm glad I got a chance to read it. It's not only a window onto a part of society I don't hear much about, but it's a fun read to boot.
Rating: 
Summary: The only mystery is why anyone would buy this book
Review: When you first start reading this book, you are immediately struck by the amateur dialogue and plodding narrative. There is an immediate impulse to check the front of the book because you think you've picked up one of those self-published or e-books by accidents -- you know the ones where authors pay to have their books publisheed? But not in this case. This book is stunningly poor, destined to fall off into obscurity fairly soon and to be remembered as the "Ishtar" of the publishing world.
Rating:
Summary: This book truly delivers!
Review: Mystery and intrigue peppered with the social commentary(though some might say rhetoric)of our time combines to deliver truly wonderful-curl-up in-your-armchair reading! It successfully fills what has been a literary void by introducing characters of a darker hue whose integrated world and life experience have revolved around one ghetto or another -- be it Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard or the larger ghetto of "the District". This is a first-rate, first effort at fiction. I anxiously await Carter's next novel!
Rating: 
Summary: This is trite, but he shows promise as a novelist
Review: Someone, somewhere should have told Stephen Carter that he is excessively verbose. After nearly 700 pages of racing toward "the arrangements! the arrangements!", it was a serious let-down when they only kind of came together.... The nearly innavigable twists and turns in the hackneyed thriller plot could give you some serious nausea. That said, the characters here are drawn very well and the observations about black middle class life were pointed and insightful. Nevertheless, the repetition, even in this, was enough to make me wonder if the editor wasn't allowed to cut anything?
| 
