When best-selling author and Yale University law professor Stephen L. Carter puts a group of influential men in a closed room their devious nature takes over.

In Carter's newest novel, "Palace Council" (Knopf, $26.95), black and white men commit murders and mayhem to keep secrets and maintain power.

This hefty novel, set during the turbulent 20-year span that included the civil rights movement and the rise and fall of President Nixon, covers prominent families both real and fictional, complex allegiances and conspiracy theories. Carter examines characters from his previous novels, "New England White" and "The Emperor of Ocean Park," during their formative years.

Carter, 54, will read from "Palace Council" on Tuesday at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham.

During a cell phone interview on his way to the airport, Carter answered a few questions about his newest political thriller.

Q: In your novels, the black characters are well-connected to prominent and influential white families, which seems to come with a hefty price tag to the black characters. Do power and influence have to corrupt?

A: I do think that there is something fascinating about powerful families generally, powerful well-connected families, be they black or white or any other color. But I don't believe, I absolutely don't believe, that power corrupts, but power tends to corrupt. ... The greater authority you can wield, the greater the temptation to do various things with that authority you really shouldn't be doing. ... So in the story, you'll notice from the very beginning of the story that the Garland family, for example, is very close to Richard Nixon. The tendency on both sides, in the story, is for each to try to use the other to get what they want.

Q: You paint a sympathetic picture of Nixon, why?

A: I'm interested in human beings and their complexities. Nixon is a fascinating individual. He is someone who had this weird American ability to keep turning up. Every time we thought he was finished, he came back. Nixon was a deeply flawed man, and he was deservedly driven out of office. But there was something in him that reflects something deep about America. America likes to win, and we like winners. Nixon was a person who would do anything to win. And that's a lot like America, that's a lot like our politics, like our culture, like our sports and a lot of other things.

Q: What will white readers coming of age during the 1960s be surprised to know about that time -- seen from the perspective of your main character, a black writer?

A: I don't think that the surprises in the book are black or white surprises. I think most of us who came of age in that period have forgotten some of the details of what it was like. And a lot of young people have no idea how important that period was. I think the period of the '60s really set the stage for modern America. A lot of the conflicts we fight now, we were fighting then ... the divisions began at that time. There are powerful parallels between that era and this one ... there was a genuine left in America back in those days, and today there isn't. The left in those days was countercultural, it was trying to build something outside of society. And people who call themselves left today are simply acting in politics. And that's very, very different. Another way of putting it is -- there is not a lot of radical energy in America on the left or the right. And there was a lot of radical energy then.

Q: You write about very affluent black families in your novels. Are you surprised that the first black presidential nominee doesn't come from a wealthy family?

A: Actually, I do not write only about affluent families, black or white. I write about families a lot because I am fascinated by the competing loyalties and tensions that families generate. I often include powerful and well-connected families, black and white alike, because they make for good fiction.

On the second part of your question, no, it is not at all surprising that the first black presidential nominee comes from comparatively humble beginnings. Most of us do -- I would include myself -- and, certainly, most of our presidents do. Although many of our presidents have been successful in their professional careers, most have not been from wealthy, well-connected families.

Q: How much has the political landscape changed since the mid-'50s and mid-'70s?

A: Right. But I think of all of that as '60s. (He laughs.) I think of the '60s roughly from Brown versus Board of Education to Nixon's resignation. And what that 20-year period has in common is that it was a period of boundless optimism and energy in American life. America had been cynical and in some ways listless ever since.