Father's Law - ISBNLookup.com

W. Ralph Eubanks

Posthumously released novels are published with great fanfare, but rarely live up to the hype or readers' expectations. On the surface, they seem to be packaged events for literary and cultural historians to dissect, rather than works of literature to be enjoyed. Happily, Richard Wright's A Father's Law, which is being published for the first time on the centennial of his birth, is not just a book for critical theorists, nor is it a book that disappoints. Like Native Son, Black Boy and Uncle Tom's Children, A Father's Law explores the inner conflicts and challenges faced by black Americans as they make their way through a society dominated by white privilege. It is by no means a perfect novel, and it has gaps in its narrative like other unfinished works. But what the book lacks in polish and gloss, it makes up for in the strength and pull of its story, which is surprisingly contemporary for one written close to half a century ago.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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. (Jan.)

Library Journal

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