First Lady (HC/DJ) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Malone
Publisher: Constable
Category: Book
Buy New: $29.95
New (2) Used (10) from $8.94
Rating:  30 reviews
Format: Import
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
ISBN: 1841195073
EAN: 9781841195070
ASIN: 1841195073
Publication Date: 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Clean, crisp & tight, never read. NO remainder mark! & DJ is very good. May have remainder mark unless previously noted. Dlvy confirmation within US included. Shipping Fast, except Hawaii and Alaska. Our Provident name: making timely fulfillment & thorough preparation to secure a future together.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 First lady is not first class Malone September 19, 2007
A. E. Pagano (Albany, NY)
I read my first Malone novel, "Handling Sin" after an Amazon recommendation and was just knocked out by his writing. I followed up with "Times Witness" a very different but engaging and inspired piece of mystery and social commentary. "First Lady", while enjoyable does not measure up to either of these other efforts and while it includes his ace police investigators, Cuddy Mangum and Justin Saville, it largely relies on a crime fiction formula which includes a serial killer, a formula which in my opinion has been exhausted and exploited. There are no real suprises, and Malone's wonderful sense of humor rarely shines through. I know this book will proabably appeal to a larger audience, but it is definitively NOT his best work. Michael screw the masses the book stores are filled with these types of mysteries. Let's see more of the real Michael Malone in your next effort.
 A great read....third in the series February 13, 2006
Connie
I met Michael Malone at Borders and my husband bought me Handling Sin (at Malone's suggestion), along with Times Witness. I started reading Handling Sin several times and just could not get into it. Then I turned to Times Witness and I was hooked! I read it quickly and immediately bought Uncivil Seasons and First Lady. First Lady is a good read. The series on Savile and Mangum are well written, funny, and quite entertaining. I love Malone's dry humor. It was not uncommon to hear me laughing out loud. I am still smiling and wondering if there is to be a fourth in the series! What DOES happen with Cuddy and Lee......?!?
The south rises again September 19, 2005
disheveledprofessor (the home of the Blue Angels)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Michael Malone is a gifted, poetic writer who knows his turf & can immerse the reader into the southern environment and its characters. For these talents alone, his novels are enjoyable and worth reading.
The mystery is presented intricately, but is too transparent [as did another reviewer, I knew the murderer at least 100 pages before the end of the novel]. But that did not distract from my interest in the characters.
I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I felt at times the language and sexual descriptions were a little too graphic for my taste. However, they were not inappropriate in context, and I admit to being on the old-fashioned side in those matters.
Superior Mystery Novel June 2, 2005
R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
These three Michael Malone mysteries, Uncivil Seasons, Time's Witness, and First Lady, are essentially expanded police procedurals written at a fairly high level. The middle book, Time's Witness, is probably the best and Uncivil Seasons is the weakest, though all are superior mysteries. As police procedural mysteries, they are all good in terms of story line, suspense, and outcome of the story. What really distinguishes these books are Malone's efforts to produce highly detailed books with in depth characterization and social analysis. Set in a mid-sized Southern city modeled on Durham, North Carolina, Malone explores issues of race, politics, and particularly, social class structure in the modern South. The protagonists of these books, the homicide detective Justin Savile and his boss, Cuddy Mangum, are attractive, well developed characters. Malone has also a talent for humorous writing that serves him well. While not as good as really fine novels like the best PD James mysteries, these are still superior to most books in this genre.
 Exhausting read May 11, 2005
J.G. Pen (Utah)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I picked this author off the shelf because he lives near Raleigh, a veritable hotbed of acclaimed national writers such as Smith, Edgerton, Price, Betts, Gibbons, Humphries, Payne, Chappell, Gingher, Moose, Frazier, Marlette, Ballard, and so many more....Now living in Utah after 25 years in North Carolina, I miss the humor that pervades Southern culture (it's drier in Utah in more ways than one). First Lady's characters are typical, full-of-themselves Southerners, their dialogue is as peppery as homemade cheese straws and as honest as a tumbler full of bourbon and branch. So I felt refilled. But the characters (some of them) were more interesting than the plot and the writing was not as smooth or rich as that of the best mystery writers. First Lady contains all the conventional elements of a detective novel -- men with women trouble, eccentric witnesses, perverted serial killers, and so on -- but nothing fresh to suck me in and push me forward. Malone tries too hard; if you're looking for a sense of place, Grisham is far better. So I dropped it and probably won't try Malone again. P.S. I also miss sweet tea 24-7.
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