The Seventh Royale - Hardcover

Engrossing and moving, this novel by the editor-in-chief of Oxmoor House has for its protagonist a highly recognizable contemporary man who wins the reader's sympathy. Jack Harris had reported the news from Alabama during the time of Martin Luther King Jr. Promoted to Washington, his career there is cut short when he insists on running an expose that embarrasses the Southern president. Now back in Montgomery and news editor of the Courant, he reencounters old cronies, including terminally ill Gov. Jesse Stuart. As Harris accompanies Stuart in his last days, he recalls the better times of a decade before and reclaims his journalist's soul while sniffing out old secrets of Montgomery politics. A subplot concerns plans to bury the body of a black serviceman in a whites-only cemetery. The two stories come together in the family of a black undertaker whose son will conduct the serviceman's funeral and whose wife had long-ago connections with the governor. Bush-league baseball in the '30s, murder, blackmail, a house bombing and a corrupt financial scheme are futher elements in this heavily atmospheric, densely Southern novel, in which Harris finds hope and redemption in reestablishing contact with his roots.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The tie that binds one-time Grand Prix race car driver Elio Cervales, former World War II field photographer Alan Escher, and dour Mormon bigamist Julian Spaulding to 1968 Reno, Nevada, appears to be a rare, custom-built automobile, the Bugatti Royale Type 41. These auto connections reach far back in time, as narrator/sleuth Escher discovers after receiving a silver Bugatti hood ornament as a legacy from Elio. Elio's 1968 murder precipitates the plot and plunges the author into a detailed exploration of the man's hidden past. There, despite such entertaining tidbits as cameos of historical characters, descriptions of the Bugatti factory, sketches of a strange menage a trois, and inside looks at early German filmmaking, Stanwood bogs down, failing to rise much above a certain oppressive tedium. For larger collections. Rex E. Klett, Anson Cty. Lib., Wadesboro, N.C.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.