Black Pawn, White Pawn

Continuing with the answers...

Besides Capote, Stephen L. Carter was the other outlier in the bunch because his book THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK is a legal thriller with a pretty heavy hand. As I mentioned I borrowed it from my mom, who raved about it and then recanted when I finished, which was weird. The chess-game-as-race-conflict metaphor governs the book, and is about as subtle as, say, representing those conflicts with automobile accidents. (Sorry, I watched the entire Oscars last night. Give me a break.) Anyway, here's the first line, as narrated by the main character (a law professor at a very Yale-ish university) about his wife (a newly minted Supreme Court nominee):

"'This is the happiest day of my life,' burbles my wife of nearly nine years on what will shortly become one of the saddest days of mine."

Stay tuned for the final three!