"Stephen L. Carter's "New England White" is more than a typical murder mystery. If you happened to be one of the fortunate ones to have read Carter's previous novel, "The Emperor of Ocean Park", you'll know what I mean. Carter, a Yale law scholar and an African-American, hails from the corridors of academe, and his very prim and proper prose style reflects that. He also writes from a culture that the average reader (assuming one is NOT African-American and a graduate of Yale) may not be familiar with: the black upper-class. Indeed, the novel, at times, reads a lot like a nonfiction examination (and sometimes criticism) of a very specific subculture of New England high society. This is not a negative observation, by the way. I found Carter's descriptions and details about this culture to be extremely enlightening and fascinating, and they are essential in understanding the whys and wherefores of the characters' actions and motivations. Spinning off from "The Emperor of Ocean Park", Carter takes some of the very minor characters in his first book--Lemaster and Julia Carlyle--and puts them in the forefront of this novel. Lemaster is the president of a prestigious New England university. His wife, Julia, is a teacher at an equally prestigious parochial school. Driving home from a dinner party one night, they discover a corpse at the side of the road. It happens to be someone they know: Professor Kellen Zant, a rather controversial figure on campus, and, as we discover, a former lover of Julia's. From this point, the novel spins its seductive web, slowly and intricately. Julia, despite her husband's forceful attempts at stopping her, decides to play detective, a role that threatens to destroy her carefully-constructed life of country-club gossip circles, political fundraisers, and picture-perfect marriages. What she uncovers involves a mysterious thirty-year-old Chappaquiddick-style death of a young girl that may threaten the careers and lives of several men in positions of the highest authority in the federal government, as well as her husband's. "New England White" is an extremely well-written and suspenseful thriller, but don't expect the break-neck pacing of John Grisham or Harlan Coben. Carter's pacing is careful and precise, much like an artist painting an elaborate picture."
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Scott (4 out of 5 stars)