After

March 27, 2006
The author of half a dozen books on race, both fiction and nonfiction, Golden tackles the subject from a different perspective in her latest novel about a black policeman who kills an innocent young black man. Thinking the driver he just pulled over is reaching for a gun, Maryland police officer Carson Blake shoots first. But what Carson thought was a gun turns out to be a cellphone. Carson; his wife, Bunny; and their three children struggle through the aftermath as Golden explores the baggage that comes with the badge for a black family man. The story has potential, but Golden's flat prose and bloodless dialogue drain it. She does offer some studied insight into a fraught dynamic, but the novel as a whole is standard and sentimental.

May 1, 2006
Carson Blake is a confident Maryland police officer in his mid-30s. He is struggling with the cynical life cycle of young black men--being a product of that experience and having the responsibility to "serve and protect" the larger community. His fairly comfortable life is drastically changed when a routine traffic stop results in his use of deadly force against an unarmed black man, a schoolteacher whose professor parents live within the general area where Blake's family lives. Obsessed with guilt about the shooting, Blake misses his son's struggle with sexual awareness and gender identification. His wife, Bunny, labors to save Blake from going off the deep end and balance his need to do right by his victim's family and his own. Golden deftly portrays the life-altering consequences of an unfortunate act, the threats to Blake's family and the victim's. But she also artfully reflects on police brutality from inside the black middle class, where neither affluence nor good intentions offer sufficient protection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)