First Lady by
Michael Malone
It’s been twelve years since Time’s Witness, the last book to feature
that curious but complementary police team Cuddy Mangum and Justin B.
Savile (the Fifth). But Michael Malone is back at last: great news for
fans of literate, downright witty and multi-faceted crime fiction.
Things are changing yet again in Hillston, North Carolina. It’s no
longer the "polite college town" it was back in Malone’s Uncivil Seasons
(1983), the first of the three books to feature the duo. The town’s
sanitation workers are on strike for higher pay; it’s more politically
correct (there’s also talk of "the New South"), and there are near riots
at the local concerts of a visiting rock star. They’re also a little
more fond of murder than they used to be.
A mathematics professor from the local university is on trial for the
murder of his wife. Cuddy Mangum, still the local Police Chief, has
another female corpse on his hands, unidentified after several weeks of
police work. Similarities with another murder 50 miles distant has the
local press suggesting that the Hillston area has its first serial
killer and that the Hillston Police Department, under Mangum and Justin
Savile his homicide chief, is losing its grip.
That we get all that in the first 20 pages of the novel, along with a
haunting and exquisitely written prologue that introduces the “slender
luminous” beauty of Irish rock star Mavis Mahar, is an indicator that
this is Malone writing at or near his brilliant best. And along with
such writing, we get great people, many of them (this book teems with
life). In particular, of course, there is the high-born and tenuously
married Savile with his penchant for the ladies, in this case the
enchanting Mavis.
With Savile narrating (as he did in Uncivil Seasons), the canny and
colourful Mangum, whilst an integral and crucial part of the
investigation, is perhaps less prominent than his fans would like.
(Check out the previous - marvellous - Time’s Witness, for the reverse
situation.) But toss in a cunningly plotted story along with the
labyrinthine machinations of the various levels of local government and
you have a hugely satisfying read.
One or two quibbles: the teasing plot involves a serial killer, a
fashionable component in many plots these days, especially when it
involves, as here, those other clichés of the genre, taunting notes, FBI
profilers (though female and impeccably drawn) along with a bizarre
theme to the murders. Nor does Malone’s "New South" seem a lot different
to that depicted in the previous books (or is that the point?).
Nevertheless wonderfully entertaining stuff, which should not only
delight, but send you back, readers and non-readers alike, to Time’s
Witness, available from Robinson in July 2002.
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