My review of Shadow of Power by Steve Martini is up at Gumshoe Review. I found the premise of the book downright offensive and even tinged with racism, though I don't go that far in my formal review. The notion that African Americans would rise up in anger after someone wrote a book pointing out that the Constitution of the United States still contains the original language about counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person is insulting to African Americans, who know this just as well as white people do.

On the other hand, one often reads that people don't know what the Bill of Rights says, and would vote against the rights granted there were it up for vote today, so I am perhaps being too harsh. And perhaps too much of an optimist. Still -- it bothered me.

But Martini can sure as heck write a courtroom scene! Gotta give him that.