The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York
Novelist Johnson (Hunting in  Harlem) convincingly re-creates New York City's stratified colonial  society in 1741, while reinterpreting the only historical account of the  rumored slave revolt, hysteria and kangaroo trial that led to the executions of  many black New Yorkers. (The uprising was also chronicled in Jill Lepore'sNew York Burning.) Narrated by a modern-day  black man who acts as defense attorney for the executed, this account  painstakingly refutes Daniel Horsmanden's 1744 book,The New York Conspiracy, in which the trial's judge,  prosecutor and court recorder sought to justify the jailing of about 160  Africans, the hanging of 18 and the burning of 13 more at the stake. Johnson's  strength is his ability to breathe movement and motivation into Horsmanden's  witnesses, though trotting out one intimidated witness after another bogs down  the latter half of the narrative. He repeatedly drumrolls an unsurprising  conclusion: that 18th-century New York really was a racist and ignorant  backwater. Fans of historical fiction or readers interested in the impact of  slavery on African-American identity today will enjoy Johnson's daring  reconstruction.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.