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The Mystery
A Review by Adrienne Miller

And the Most-Hyped Novel of the Season Award goes to... The Emperor of Ocean Park. The background and set-up for this book has been too delicious for the media to pass up: an esteemed Yale law professor writing an ambitious murder mystery set in the world of the wealthy black conservative elite. But let me just say this: Unfocused, confused, confusing, and contrived, Emperor is not the big important social novel you've been lead to believe it is.

The narrator's father, a powerful judge, is murdered. Supposedly. The supposed murder leads us to a mysterious computer disk filled with the names of those who've bought the judge's influence. The judge -- a drunk, a chess master, a Nixon appointee, and all-around man of mystery -- had four children: the narrator, Misha, a law professor; a daughter named Micah who becomes obsessed with solving his murder and thinks she knows who did it; a son named Addison, who, like his namesake Addison DeWitt, is a cad-and-a-half (but not as witty); and a dead daughter named Abby who was killed years ago by a hit-and-run driver. Misha is married to a "beautiful" woman (does anyone ever have ugly wives in genre novels?) named Kimmer. Kimmer, who's being considered for a federal court appointment, may or may not be having an affair with her boss. Other ambiguities: The church rector's death may or may not have had something to do with the judge's murder. Abby's death may or may not have had something to do with the judge's murder. The judge's chess-related puzzle may or may not have something to do with his murder. You get the idea. The preposterous ending involves the famous disk, the ocean, and the dead daughter's teddy bear.

To be fair, there's some nice writing here, though the prose tends toward the melodramatic. But the author's problem isn't that he can't write. It's that he can't tell a story. Emperor is muddy, messy, cluttered, and chockablock with false clues and meaningless details. As for the hype: You don't believe everything you hear, do you?

Adrienne Miller is Esquire's literary editor.

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