Tags
1944, Amy Chua, Berkeley, book review, flawed hero, historical detail, historical fiction, legal procedure, Mme Chiang-Kai Shek, murder mystery, plot twists, racism, reverse snobbery, San Francisco, Second World War, shipyards, Wendell Willkie
Review: The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua
Minotaur, 2023. 362 pp. $28
It’s March 1944, and Walter Wilkinson, a frequent guest at the fancy Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California, is found murdered—shot at twice, surviving the first confrontation but not the second. However, Wilkinson is more than just a prominent out-of-towner; he ran for president against FDR in 1940 and was presumed a candidate for the ’44 election as well. (Chau has based him loosely on Wendell Wilkie.)
Consequently, the murder has enormous implications, and Detective Al Sullivan has a thousand pieces to fit together in this jigsaw puzzle of power and privilege. The Bainbridge family, one of San Francisco’s wealthiest, provides several persons of interest, if you count cousins, as Sullivan must. Isabella Bainbridge, in fact, is drinking with him in the Claremont bar when he’s called upstairs to investigate the first murder attempt—and when he comes back downstairs, she’s gone.
Curiously, Isabella’s late sister Iris died fourteen years before in the Claremont, presumably by accident—and evidence from that death may pertain to the current case. Coincidence or not? But even without that complication, Wilkinson’s infamous philandering and political views have earned him many enemies, from radical leftists to, perhaps, Mme Chiang Kai-Shek, who lives in Berkeley and, it’s alleged, had an affair with Wilkinson.
Incidentally, I thought this bizarre—what was she doing in Berkeley?—but apparently, she did live there and was rumored to have had an affair with Wendell Willkie. Wartime rumors deserve their reputation, but I like what Chua has done with Mme Chiang.
So there’s pressure on Sullivan, and the district attorney to whom he answers cares less about guilt or innocence than building his career. If he can send a Bainbridge heiress to the gas chamber for murder, so much the better. Apparently, a socialite jilted him a week before their wedding, and he’s got an ax to grind. He’s also got a dozen prejudices, which he treats as fact.
From this maze of secrets and motives, Chua has crafted a first-rate mystery with more twists than fifty yards of rope, starting with the two separate gunshots, only one of which hit the target. I like how she conveys psychological disturbance (caveat: her portrayal of psychiatrists speaks of prejudice), and I’m not surprised to read that she’s a law professor, given how she deftly explains procedure. I also like how she re-creates the wartime Bay Area, inundated with men in uniform, shipyards clanging away, and the rules of child labor, say, going by the boards.
The place is also blatantly racist, which figures prominently, as the credibility of witnesses or theories about who done it depend on who’s got what skin color. Since Sullivan has Mexican heritage—he changed his name to aid his career—that provides the chance to test him at every turn. He’s a dedicated lawman, but he’s also trying to make his way, and he wrestles with his conscience—or tries not to, which tells you something.
In a clever parallel to the D.A., Chua plays on Sullivan’s own social prejudices against the rich, whom he brushed up against while attending UCal Berkeley:
Kids who felt guilty—no, resentful—about being born with a gold spoon in their mouth. Kids trying to escape who they were. Trying on different personas like normal folks tried on shoes. . . . Too many choices, that was the problem. They had no constraints, no debts, no need to work—they could be anything they wanted, barring only a total lack of talent, which was actually not uncommon.
Consequently, when he questions the beautiful, intellectually nimble but manipulative Isabella Bainbridge, he has to steel himself to resist her charms and doesn’t always succeed. He also loses his temper at his bright but untrustworthy niece, whose mother is a deadbeat. Uncle Al winds up looking after the girl a lot, and he resents it. So he has sharp edges and weaknesses, what every hero needs (but which some authors don’t provide).
But his biography is as fake as a three-dollar bill (and I can’t understand why Chua would make such a mistake). I’ll readily believe he’s got a Mexican father but can pass, and I’m shocked to learn that these United States deported hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans during the depression, including people born here. (Nothing’s new under the sun.) But I don’t believe that Sullivan is one-quarter Jewish, and I could have done without that. I could also have done without the slur he utters about the relevant relative.
More significantly, did Al really work a passel of jobs to pay his way through Cal, get stellar grades, and star on the baseball team? Did he really fight on Guadalcanal in 1942, get discharged because of a knee wound, try to reenlist and get rejected? That knee never even gives him a twinge; he even runs three miles a day. What a guy.
Fortunately, Mr. Perfect has his flaws. The Golden Gate is a terrific book.
Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.