Customer Reviews

Time's Witness

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I read Michael Malone's first mystery "Uncivil Seasons," I was most impressed with policeman Cuddy Mangum. His dialogue seemed the most authentic, his character the most fully realized. What a pleasure then to have an entire book told in his voice. And what a book! This is a big, gorgeous, complicated piece of work. Malone weaves so many characters and plotlines and issues together -- and seamlessly, at that -- that it's truly breathtaking. As for the writing itself, there's not one clunky sentence, not one line of false dialogue, not one overblown metaphor. It's all clean, crisp and very, very funny. In short, this is not only one of the finest mysteries I've ever read, it's simply one of the finest NOVELS I've ever read.

Unlike 98% of people who've read Michael Malone's work, I was quite underimpressed by his "Uncivil Seasons" - it was fine as far as detective stories go, but it was a bit too quirky, a bit too unconventional for my taste. So I was not looking forward to "Time's Witness," which revived many of the same characters - I read it only because I love Malone's other work, and TW was the last I had to read. If you can muscle your way through the first 150 pages, grow used to Cuddy (the narrator's) unusual voice, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Malone is a beautiful character writer and TW is as good as they come: the story is interesting, complex and raises some important questions. (While frequently preachy, Malone's first-person technique allows the reader to ascribe the preachiness to the narrator and not so much to the author.) The trial scenes toward the end surpass anything John Grisham has pumped out. A great read; find it if you can (I found my copy on Ebay)

Malone is an amazing writer. His command of the language, his ability to interweave multiple plots, and, above all, his characterization of people in "the new South" is flawless. Of the Justin/Cuddy trilogy, Time's Witness is by far my favorite. Perhaps that's because the point of view is that of Cuddy Mangum, far more complex than tortured soul Justin Savile, narrarator of "Uncivil Seasons".

An older book that went out of print for awhile and is just now being enjoyed by a new generation of readers, "Time's Witness" covers the controversy of capital punishment, when the criminal is truly not guilty, in a way that Grisham, Turow, and many others are just getting to now. The threads of who actually was responsible for the death of a cop, and later a civil rights activist, are sometimes a little difficult to follow.

But Malone keeps the complex story alive by his references to day to day small dramas, while the large plot unfolds. His phrasing is elegant, and bringing in the funny Martha (Cuddy's dog), the personal lives of cops Nancy & Zeke, and the bond between Cuddy and inimitable attorney Isaac Rosethorn (think Robert Duvall) grounds the reality you look for in a novel, into this fine book.

In particular, the courtroom scenes, near the end of the novel, come to life in a way that many other "legal thriller" novelists would love to emulate. Rising above all is the way Malone brings Cuddy's (and others') beliefs on issues of the day to bear in the story with crisp and believable dialogue. Morally on par on multiple themes in the way that "To Kill a Mockingbird" read, "Time's Witness" is a classic of our times!

Bravo!

If you liked the narration of Justin Saville in Uncivil Seasons, you will be pleasantly surprised by this sequel. The preceding book had Justin describing his good friend Cuddy as the classic good ol' boy. Well, this book has the same characters, but with Cuddy as the narrator. It gives us a different look at Justin, and some insight into Cuddy. He is not a dumb, semi-redneck, carefree guy. He is smart and serious, but he hides that, surprising a lot of people in a lot of ways. Uncivil Seasons has some great writing by Malone, who is my favorite author. However, this is a better book due to the complex plot and the wonderful drawings of so many characters.

I have yet to find a more perfect blend of wry humor, fully realized characters, supspense and a rousing sense of integrity on every page as in this book. This book is absolutely one that got away. The title should have been on everyone's lips.

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. 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......?!?

Mr. Malone blends a strong courtroom police procedural plot with interesting characters and a feel for the current small town south. His plots [also in Handling Sin and Uncivil Seasons] are extremely intricate and the main characters, especially Cuddy and Justin, so clearly drawn that you feel they are people you have actually met and care about. My only critcisms are that the plot is a bit too intricate --there are so many threads running in and out of the story that it is difficult to keep them all together --I'd say the same is true for the number of minor characters who appear. All in all --he has quickly become one of my favorite writers and his books grab my interest and are completely enjoyable.

With a different voice, this time Cuddy's, Michael Malone again presents the characters of Police Chief Cuddy Mangum and Justin Savile V. They first appeared in the wonderful book, Uncivil Seasons. This book is even better. It is layered pefectly and is unique in that you end up caring about every character presented. And, most of them are flawed. Malone is a great writer and I look forward to reading First Lady.

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.

I can only echo what the previous reviewer said....I've loved all of Malone's books and am eagerly awaiting his next one. If you're out there, Michael, when will your next book be out?