A Father's Law

November 19, 2007
The centennial of Richard Wright's birth occasions the publication of this still-unfinished crime novel, which Wright was working on when he died in 1960. Ruddy Turner, a black Chicago police officer, is appointed the police chief of a rich Chicago suburb, Brentwood Park, when the current police chief is murdered. As Ruddy settles into his office, a woman is found dead in the Brentwood Park woods, possibly the sixth victim of what we would now call a serial killer. Ruddy's son, Tommy—a brilliant but high-strung sociology student at the University of Chicago who makes Ruddy uneasy because of his difficult temperament—knew one of the murder victims well and has been “studying” Brentwood Park. In an atmosphere of mounting hysteria in town, Ruddy's unconscious cop mind begins to connect Tommy to the murders. Is it due to some Freudian rivalry between the father and the son, or to the facts of the case? The plot elements and dialogue in this draft are crude, and it's hard to say how the book would have been shaped out of its state of flux. A short introduction from Wright's daughter, Julia, speculates provocatively and notes how Wright brings race, class and family dynamics to bear on Ruddy's actions and thoughts, which he does brilliantly.

January 15, 2008
Noted African American author Wright was working on this book shortly before his death in 1960. It is now being published for the first time by his daughter and literary executor, Julia Wright, marking the centennial of Wright's birth. Ruddy Turner is a black policeman who has just become the chief of police in an upscale Chicago suburb where there has been a string of murders. Turner is a conservative Catholic, with a devoted wife and a college-age son, Tommy, who seems disturbed and obsessed with the idea of crime. This is a psychological crime novel in which the police chief begins, with horror, to look upon his son as a possible murderer, but we never do find out if Tommy is really guilty or what happens next. While this unfinished novel adds to Wright's body of work, it will be more useful to school and college libraries for its literary merits than to the general mystery collections at most public libraries.Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib, Providence, RI

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2007
The centenary of Richard Wright's birth will spark renewed appreciation for a man whose call to letters and telling truth to power shaped a life of relentless struggle. In her superb biography, Richard Wright (2001), Hazel Rowley argues that Wright was far ahead of his time. Now new proof of his prescience, imagination, and insights into the complexities of human psychology is found in the manuscript Wright was working on when he died at age 52 in 1960. Published for the first time, thismurder mystery with a wrenching twist and far-reaching questions about conflicted responsibility is introduced by Wright's daughter, Julia, who describes it as a ?faulty, sketchy, sometimes repetitive draft.? Indeed, its raw creativity reminds us of the expert revision necessary forperfecting a novel such as Wright's nowclassic Native Son. But this is a gripping work nonetheless. An African American Chicago police captain is appointed chief of police in a wealthy suburb plagued bya serial killer. Ruddy's investigation is complicated by his growing concern over hisuniversity student son. As Ruddy learns ofTommy's wild despair over his girlfriend's congenital syphilis, every instinct he possesses tells him that behindTommy's intellectualizing lies something sinister. Wright tells an intense, provocative, and vitalcrime story that excavatesparadoxical dimensions ofrace, class, sexism, family bonds, and social obligationwhile seeking the deepest meaning of the law.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)