Like a Fading Shadow

Although this is not at all a rehabilitation of Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray, history-loving Molina (In the Night of Time; Manuscript of Ashes) steeps readers in the details of Ray's life, such as his clumsy handling of guns despite being a crack shot and the contradictions in how people recalled him. The novel focuses on his ten-day stay in the magically luminous city of Lisbon, Portugal, after killing King and awaiting passage to some colonial African state where his white supremacism will be appreciated. Years after 1968, Molina travels to Lisbon in search of literary enlightenment and finds it in Ray's brief association with the city; this, too, becomes part of the narrative. There is a veritable cascade of detail with multiple possibilities for moments when Ray's actions are uncertain. The result is a dual portrait of a writer seeking inspiration and then examining the clouded mind of that inspiration.