The Last Integrationist

Realism slowly gives way to dark satire in this richly imagined but disjointed first novel about race, politics and criminal justice. Attorney General Melvin Hutchinson, who's black, is President Troy McCracken's first choice to fill the vacant vice presidency after the current veep suffers a stroke. Hutchinson is a living symbol of law and order in this near-future America, where executions are televised live and the Justice Department has established boot camps called DRCs (Drug Reeducation Centers) to stop inner-city crime. In a brilliantly effective device, using Hutchinson and his niece Emma as the main characters, Lamar examines relationships between the races through interracial romance-primarily Emma's with her Jewish boyfriend, Seth Winkler, but also through an interracial affair that left Hutchinson with a devastating secret. Less effective are the cliff-hanging surprises with which he ends the novel's sections before veering off on other plot lines only to build upon the revelations obliquely. Regrettably, the final section, which ties everything together into a conspiracy plot and ends with a brutal but cartoonish finale, buries all of Lamar's excellent character work beneath a heavy message-a thud of a wrap-up for a novel that features a lot of fine writing about race in America. Lamar's first book was the memoir Bourgeois Blues. (Mar.)