Third fiction about the "darker nation"--Washington, New York, etc. Cleverly done. Well written. ( )

Mr Carter has never failed to deliver. Including a few characters from "The Emperor of Ocean Park" doubly makes this a treat. For an adventure that will have you thinking long after its finished, this can't be beat. ( )

A continuation of the series of African American History novels Mr. Carter has started. Done well in his usual articulate way. ( )

I really enjoyed reading Palace Council. It was different than other books I have previously read, because of the overall story plot and the way it was written. I really liked how the characters actually confronted and interacted with real-life political figures, like Presidents Kennedy and Nixon. I also liked how the story took place over a long period of time. Books I normally read tkae place over the course of a few weeks or even days, so this was a nice change. It was able to cover critical events in history, and showed how the characters reacted to them. The novel went deep and really showed how the characters' Eddie and Auriela develop in their lives and in their personal relationship. It was also different for me reading about upper-class African Americans in Harlem in the 1950's and early 1960's. The one thing I didn't like about the book is the lack of explination of the purpose or specific goal of the Palace Council. I felt that the author should have explained and elaborated more on the group. Overall, I really enjoyed the book, and I would highly recomend it to anyone who enjoys mystery, politics, and history. ( )

A love story, a missing sister, and a mysterious group planning to control the US government, all set against the history of the US in the mid to late 20th century. Eddie Wesley goes on an extended search for his missing sister and while doing so, uncovers a mysterious conspiracy. Good book - maybe a little too long. ( )

This was my first book by Carter. It is a good mystery/thriller with a complex (almost overly-constructed) plot, a good number of well-drawn characters, cameo appearances by a number of real historical figures such as J.Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, the Russian spy Col. Abel, William Colby, and others, plus a long time span of 1954-1975, set mainly in the United States (Harlem and the east coast), but with a visit to Vietnam. “Palace Council” and a host of other catchwords come from Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Council is a group of wealthy, black and white, Republicans who get together in 1952 to set in train a plan that will unfold across decades, to get “their” man into the White House. As with a lot of conspiracies, things don’t run quite as smoothly as intended, given the disparate interests of the principals involved, and key members of the Council start being murdered. …something, or someone, is afoot. Eddie Wesley, a rising literary star out of Harlem, is the main protagonist of the novel and we follow the action through him as he stumbles into something he doesn’t understand when he tries to find his sister who has mysteriously disappeared only to turn up as commander of an urban terrorist group. The plot thickens every chapter as we follow Eddie’s attempts to understand and unravel the mysteries, to find his sister, and to love the woman of his life who marries another man who happens to become one of those who is murdered. The writing is fluid, the pace is good, Eddie is a sympathetic character; the sort of thriller that will keep people turning the pages.

Carter borrows characters in his first two books for this insiders look at Harlem and Washington DC in the 1950s and 1960s. From the doyenes of Harlem to the Weatherman underground there is virtually no major news event of the times that has not been included in this novel. Perhaps the author has reached a bit too far and unless one is really well versed in the politics of the day some of the story will go right over the reader's head. To give him credit, Carter does a really good job of unraveling the mystery and laying it out by the end of the novel. This story is more complex than the first two and perhaps drags on a bit long but it is a good, intelligent, well plotted story. ( )