first lady

First Lady
$15.00
Malone, Michael. Time's Witness. 1989. 541p. $16.00 (pb). ($10.20 from amazon.com)
Michael Malone. First Lady. 2001. 500+ p. $24.00 (pb) ($18.72 from amazon.com).

The words that pop into my head when I reflect on Malone's wonderful comic novels about life in North Carolina are "generous," "rich" and "humane." Time's Witness (1989) and First Lady (2002) are the second and third crime novels featuring Cuddy Mangum, the super-smart class police chief of Hillston, NC, and his chief of the Homicide Bureau, the Justin Savile V, who descends from a long line of southern aristocrats, with governors, state and federal legislators, and judges in his family line. Cuddy hides his intelligence (but only partly) behind a wisecracking, southern cracker exterior. He is scrupulously honest, and as a consequence, so is his police force, because he keeps them toeing the line and he has resolutely weeded out the crooks who hid behind their badges before he came along. The bad cops, no ex-cops, don't love him for this, and in Time's witness, two of them try to do him in, and three of them are involved in all sorts of crime. Justin, for all his aristocratic lineage and mien, is a warm and passionate man and a doting husband: he can connect with almost anyone, including the petty thieves, drunkards and other reprobates he uses as informants.

Both of these novels are first-rate, but if I had to give an edge to one of them, it would be Time's Witness. That's because of its theme (a black veteran wrongly convicted of homicide and slated to be executed, and a white racist conspiracy against all sorts of things, but ultimately to maintain control of the state by the `right kind' of people, all of whom are conveniently white) but also because it tells a haunting love story, with star-crossed lovers (Cuddy and the wife of the liberal aspirant for governorship), and lastly, because it contains what may be the most exciting and funniest account of a jury trial ever, or at least in the last forty years.

There are in addition the small excellences which seem effortlessly to grace every one of Malone's exceptional novels: a lovely scene on pp. 167-171 where Cuddy interviews a boy --eleven years old, poor white, and somewhere between nervous and scared-- about an abandoned car he has found; a passage on pp. 414-5 between the warden of the state penitentiary where the condemned man is being held and Cuddy, discussing the death penalty; the moments scattered throughout the book when Cuddy reflects on his doomed love affair with Lee, wife of the governor-to-be, who will never leave her husband because although the marriage is loveless it makes sense politically, and that's what she's been bred to be, the first lady of the state her family made their millions in. Lastly, there are the wonderfully rich characters who people the pages of this wonderfully rich book -Bubba Percy, vulgar, brassy, tasteless and bright, and relentlessly on the make as reporter and then editor of the local newspaper; a variety of very bad guys, who may be stupid or ignorant but are also as dangerous as poisonous snakes, violent and mean; various civil rights activists, black and white; Cuddy's crew of detectives, none of whom fit stereotypes of southern blacks or whites; and -most glorious of all- Isaac Rosethorn, Cuddy's savior when he was a child and his mentor still, one hell of a lawyer and a real human being, vanity, love, and all. (See pp. 318-9 for a fine description of Cuddy's relations with Isaac.)

I will say less about First Lady (2002), first because I've already said about Time's Witness but it also applies to this book, and secondly, because as soon as I finished it, I lent it to our son, a philosophy professor, to read on the plane back to his house on the other side of the country. He's already emailed me and asked me to send him more novels by Malone. The plot is about a series of murders which appear to have been committed by a serial killer, dubbed (by the press) the Guess Who Killer, because his victims wore Guess Who t-shirts. There is another doomed love story -this time, Justin's, as he and his wife Alice adjust to the death of their infant son -Alice has moved out and Justin can't bring himself to pursue her, so torn up is he by the death. Justin narrates this novel, Cuddy the first. Riding his horse Manassas in the early morning light, Justin comes on a young woman, who dives into the river and then surfaces in front of him like a mermaid bathed in sunlight. She is a singer, a star of the first water, kind of a cross between Sinead O'Connor and Janis Joplin, and Justin is lost -for a while.

These, and especially Time's Witness, are mystery stories like War and Peace is a war novel and To Kill a Mockingbird a legal thriller. They are generous novels, which depict a rich and all too human universe, in which saints and sinners are inextricably intertwined. Indeed, sainthood and sinnership often share space uncomfortably in the same breasts.

A review isn't long enough to list the riches of either of these wonderful books.

The Ministry and Myth of the First Lady
$9.99
My God from Zion! If this mini book with a mighty punch doesn't deliver as a companion to the Bible on so many levels for us woman of God, I don't know what would. Apostle Turner hit one out of the park with this book. He was truly operating under the anointing during the penning. He uses women in the Bible and life experience to impart and enlighten. This book will grip you from the first chapter, and hold you until the last. It was a refreshing read. I have given it to a few of my "First Lady" friends, and their Pastor husband's ended up trying to keep it for themselves. When I finished reading my copy, I gave it to my husband as well. I have even read excerpts from it over the phone while ministering... it's a good read, AND a good eat! You might think, "How can a man write this type of book about a woman?" Sisters, Apostle Turner is completely on point! Grab yourself a copy today, and get some for those that the Holy Spirit lays on your heart.

Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of The White House
$16.95
I enjoyed the background information about the presidential wives that I had no knowledge of before. It seems that it takes a special lady to be the wife of the president. What I found from most of them was that it seemed like they were an important part of who their husbands had become.

First Lady, 2nd edition
$19.99
I really enjoyed this well-written story. It was fun and didn't take itself too seriously. Cooper's books have not disappointed me yet.