First Lady
A Novel
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Bestseller!
Critically acclaimed novelist and award-winning short story writer Michael Malone is the smart, literate, compassionate voice of the American south. His gift for crafting the great American comedy, as he did in Handling Sin, is matched only by his ability to create mystery novels ripped with tension, twists and humanity.
A woman’s body has been found—murdered, mutilated, tagged and addressed to Lt. Justin Savile V and Police Chief Cuddy R. Mangum. Dubbed the "Guess Who Killer" by a voracious press, Hillston, North Carolina, has a serial killer on its hands. The media and the mayor demand answers while the city lives in fear. Savile and Mangum are being taunted and stalked. Worse, they have no leads.
Plot driven in the classic sense of a bestseller, yet written with literary style and substance, First Lady is a novel you will want to read and savor yourself and share with a friend. Continuing the series begun with lauded novels Time’s Witness and Uncivil Seasons, Michael Malone’s return proves a thrilling success.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Malone, who created a stir a decade ago with some award-winning mystery-thrillers (Fast Love; Red Clay), returns after a long absence with this North Carolina based thriller starring his likable previous protagonists, police chief Cuddy Mangum and his chief of homicide, Lt. Justin Savile V. They are up against a serial killer dubbed by the local press Guess Who, whose female victims are left looking like martyred saints; media attention steps up a notch when one of his victims may be world-famous Irish rock singer Mavis Mahar, in Hillston for a concert. There are myriad complications: Mavis may be having an affair with the governor of the state, whose wife Cuddy has long hankered after; a crooked attorney general promptly shows up at the scene of Mavis's apparent murder and destroys a heap of evidence. Meanwhile, the bodies including that of a woman judge in a prominent local murder case keep piling up, while Cuddy and Justin are running into dead ends in their search for suspects. Malone knows his turf, and his local politics are convincingly sketched in, with many welcome touches of humor. There are plenty of false moves, too, however: Justin's romance with Mavis is not convincing, and any perceptive reader will have spotted the killer long before the vaunted cops and their female FBI helpmeets do. There are also many beguiling byways of local lore, which Malone loves to lead us down, but which severely slow the narrative thrust.
