A review by psteve
First Lady by Michael Malone

3.0

Pickeed this one up at a library sale because I remember liking Uncivil Seasons quite a bit. This is a murder mystery involving a serial killer in the town of Hillston, North Carolina. It's very well done; the characters are engaging and pull you in, though I spotted the killer a good 75 pages before the cops did. Still, the book was quite enjoyable.

I've found that many times in books when a character is a big music star, things somehow ring false; maybe the character doesn't fit in, or the tie to the rest of the characters doesn't work, or the portrayal of huge fame is off. In this case, one of the characters is an Irish singer who is very huge, and is in Hillston for a concert. Erratic, she's known for missing some shows. Her involvement with the book's main character is maybe a bit unbelievable, but the rest of her portray is good. I like this bit: "she offered the most intimate privacy while at the same time promising, through every gliding catch, every strange modulation o fkey, such large and intense feeling that the sound of her voice was ike a great drum beating out not just her own heart's pulse but everyone else's too."