TRIAL

A Black teen stands accused of murdering a cop. Can his White father save him?

For his first novel in nearly a decade, popular thriller author Patterson heads to rural Georgia, where 18-year-old Malcolm Hill accidentally kills a racist White police officer during a scuffle following a traffic stop. Malcolm was targeted by the officer (and kept a gun in the car) because his mother, Allie Hill, is a prominent Black voting rights activist and magnet for death threats. But because Malcolm was intoxicated and the officer left his dash- and bodycams off, Malcolm lacks exonerating evidence; worse, when prosecutors learn his Facebook feed includes a rapper’s video advocating that Black people kill police officers, it’s easier to argue for premeditated murder. Enter Chase Bancroft Brevard, a U.S. congressman, one-time Harvard classmate and boyfriend of Allie’s, and—he’s compelled to reveal before the trial—Malcolm’s dad. Patterson is a pro at the courtroom procedural, well versed in legal and rhetorical parrying. But this narrative is labored and lapses into biased tropes. As an author’s note explains, Patterson consulted with a platoon of experts on race and voting rights, but his Black characters’ inability to talk about practically anything else makes them stiff and simplistic. And though Patterson has tried to avoid making a White savior out of Chase—Black lawyer Jabari Ford leads Malcolm’s defense—Patterson spends a disproportionate amount of time dwelling on Chase’s anxieties as a politician and father compared to Allie’s and Malcolm’s more pressing crises and Jabari’s battle against a biased justice system. (In a Wall Street Journal essay, Patterson claimed the book was rejected by multiple publishers because he tried to get into Black characters’ heads, but it’s a flaw that he doesn’t in Jabari’s case.) Patterson’s grasp of 2020s racial politics is solid enough, but he’s failed to construct persuasive characters around them.

A would-be timely page-turner, weakly executed.