Back Channel

June 30, 2014
In the prologue of Carter’s intriguing what-if thriller, Margo Jensen, a bright 19-year-old Cornell student, meets privately in Washington, D.C., with President Kennedy, who is trying to navigate the Cuban Missile Crisis without triggering nuclear war. Earlier that fall, Margo became involved in a covert intelligence operation through a brilliant Cornell professor of hers, Lorenz Niemeyer, who’s an expert on Conflict Theory. Margo learns that a Russian chess champion, Vasily Smyslov, has alerted the U.S. to a surprise Soviet move in Cuba. The only way to get more details from Smyslov is to send an American counterpart, Bobby Fischer, to Russia to sound him out, and Fischer will only go if Margo, whom he considers to be a good-luck charm, accompanies him. Carter (The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln) makes this audacious premise convincing and manages to build suspense around a historical event with a known outcome. Author tour.

July 1, 2014
Mutually assured destruction meets the dawning civil rights era in legal scholar/novelist Carter's (Yale Law School; The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, 2012, etc.) latest novel.Margo Jensen constantly has to prove herself, especially when she's seated before someone like professor Niemeyer, who, though fearsome, teaches a course on conflict theory that is "among the most popular on the Cornell campus." Margo, as her name suggests, is a woman, which lowers her categorically in the professor's estimation. She's also African-American, which seems not to faze him, certainly not when he helps recruit her to the cause of a nation scrambling to keep up with and beat the Soviets. So it is that Margo jets off to Bulgaria, where she runs afoul of the security apparatus but proves herself sturdy enough to serve as a very much behind-the-scenes intermediary between president and premier, world leaders tasked not just with running their respective countries, but also containing the war factions that clamor for a showdown. Carter is particularly successful at creating an atmosphere of nearly oppressive suspense: As the story unfolds, everyone, it seems, is implicated, even the snotty BMOC who pesters Margo to test the mattresses in the fallout shelter with him. And despite the unlikeliness of the scenario-half a century ago, an African-American traveling either behind the Iron Curtain or outside the kitchen of the White House would attract more attention than Margo does-Carter does a very good job of placing the reader as fly on the wall. We're treated to all kinds of spectacles from that viewpoint, from Bobby Kennedy clashing with Curtis LeMay to spy vs. spy action in the field ("Ainsley hit him hard in the groin and, as he doubled over, harder in the chin") that features a welcome veteran of other Carter adventures.The tale grinds too slowly at turns and runs a touch too long, but Carter delivers a satisfying historical thriller with some nice cliffhanging moments.

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Starred review from August 1, 2014
In October 1962, when Soviet ships are offloading nuclear missiles in Cuba, Margo Jensen is a young black coed at Cornell, every bit as ambitious as the father she never knew. Though he had an engineering degree, his race kept him from being more than a driver during the war, when he died in a truck accident. So Margo is particularly vulnerable when an esteemed professor recruits her for a mission to serve as part of a back channel for secret negotiations between President John Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to prevent a nuclear war. Shuttling between Ithaca, Washington, D.C., and Bulgaria, Margo is entangled in the internecine battles between spy agencies on both sides, unsure who to trust as she is caught in the twists and turns of backstabbing, double-dealing skulduggery. Hawks on both sides threaten to push the odds of nuclear war as the fate of the nation balances on the aplomb of a 19-year-old black coed. Carter (The Emperor of Ocean Park, 2002; The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, 2012) renders a fast-paced espionage thriller with tantalizing grains of truth that highlight the general back channel in which black Americans have had to operate as citizens for much of the nation's history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2014

Yale law professor and best-selling novelist Carter (e.g., The Emperor of Ocean Park) blends fact and fiction in this story of 19-year-old Margo Jensen, a black Cornell sophomore, who holds the fate of the world in her hands when she finds herself the "back channel" liaison between Soviet Premier Khrushchev and President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. Billed as mystery but clearly of broad interest; with a reading group guide.

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