The Emperor of Ocean Park

I don’t read a lot of fiction and I rarely read thrillers.  But someone recommended The Emperor of Ocean Park to me and so I listened to an abridged version on audio via Audible.com.  The abridgement was only 6 hours so this must have been 50% or maybe even less of what is a very thick book of 650 pages!  It definitely kept my interest all the way through, but reading some of the reviews of the book, I somehow feel like I missed much of the seasonings if not some of the actual meat.

The book is about an African American law professor whose father, a former federal judge, has just died of an apparent heart attack.  Almost immediately the protagonist, Alcot Garland becomes embroiled in a web of mysteries that his father has laid out for him.  He is assumed by everyone to know something about the “arrangements” his father has made, but Alcot knows nothing and must put the puzzle together piece by piece and clue by clue.  While doing this we get some glimpse into the upper-middle-class black enclaves of Martha’s Vineyard, the world of the Ivy League law school, and some of the Washington DC high-power political world.

The ending bothered me a bit in that it seemed kind of far-fetched, and also I could almost see it being played out on the big screen as I listened.  A bit too dramatic and cinematic, but I guess the screenwriter will have a pretty easy time of it.  Again, what I listened to is probably half of the book; so if this sounds like a less than stunning review, take it with a grain of salt.

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