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Title: A 250-page thriller in a 652-page bore
Review: I decided to read 'The Emperor of Ocean Park' because the story sounded exciting: a postmortem message from an infamous black judge to his son. Mysterious (and sometimes grisly) deaths, a beautiful and mysterious stranger, and the mysterious disappearance of a scrapbook of awful memories. Mysterious, eh?The problem with this exciting tale is that it is buried in 400 pages of irritating commentary. The protagonist, Talcott Garland, is unhappy with everything: his allegedly unfaithful wife, the nasty politics and racial divide at the law school where he is professor, and just about everything else. Talcott has something snotty to tell us about every colleague and family member, and his self-pitying attitude makes him difficult to like. If you can stand the endless melodrama, you might be able to dig your way to an interesting mystery story.
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