- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Robinson Publishing; New edition edition (1 July 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841195227
- ISBN-13: 978-1841195223
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 917,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Things have changed in Hillston, North Carolina. A young black man is on Death Row and the Klan is again rearing its head, while a dirty tricks campaign is mounting against the womanizing candidate for state governor - who also happens to be the husband of Hillston chief of police's true love.
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First Sentence
I don't know about Will Rogers, but I grew up deciding the world was nothing but a sad, dangerous junk pile heaped with shabby geegaws, the bullies who peddled them, and the broken-up human beings who worked the line. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I don't know about Will Rogers, but I grew up deciding the world was nothing but a sad, dangerous junk pile heaped with shabby geegaws, the bullies who peddled them, and the broken-up human beings who worked the line. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Heart-felt, witty and frighteningly compulsive, crime thrillers, and fiction in general don't come much better than this. Police Chief Cuddy Mangum is a masterful creation: funny, eccentric and brilliantly iconoclastic, and makes a bewitching narrator. He is matched by a beautifully evoked cast of chracters inhabiting Malone's North Carolina town. Quite beside the obligatory thirller plotline, Malone and his idiosancratic narrator take us on many a diversion as he meanders through his tale. But this only adds to the wonder and magic of this peerless novel.
Deep and richly written, this transcends mere crime thriller to create a vivid protrait of a town and its inhabitants, so creating a richly realised portrait of humanity to rank alongside the likes of Tolstoy. Funny, gripping and thrillingly thought-provoking, this is a book not to be missed.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought this book after it was recommended to me by Amazon based on my previous purchases and also on the strength of its reviews.
It is not a bad book, in fact it is very well written, but it is a bit slow and ultimately disappointing. The characters although likeable and interesting seem to be made up of every cliche going. Southern Police Chief Cuddy Mangum, poor boy liberal and ex-Vietnam grunt, his ex-mental patient wisecracking partner old Southern moneyed Justin Saville the Fifth, a war hero wannabe senator, with a taste for extra marital sex who is surprise, surprise now married to Cuddy's childhood sweetheart who is definitely old money. Throw in the usual suspects, the KKK, local armed militias, crooked big business, crooked cops, a young black man on Death Row and an aging, eccentric but brilliant lawyer, an old cover up and there you have it.
Not exactly totally predictable but not particularly exciting either. For me it was not anywhere as good as the reviews suggested. Good enough that I will possibly try another book by the author but not right away.
It is not a bad book, in fact it is very well written, but it is a bit slow and ultimately disappointing. The characters although likeable and interesting seem to be made up of every cliche going. Southern Police Chief Cuddy Mangum, poor boy liberal and ex-Vietnam grunt, his ex-mental patient wisecracking partner old Southern moneyed Justin Saville the Fifth, a war hero wannabe senator, with a taste for extra marital sex who is surprise, surprise now married to Cuddy's childhood sweetheart who is definitely old money. Throw in the usual suspects, the KKK, local armed militias, crooked big business, crooked cops, a young black man on Death Row and an aging, eccentric but brilliant lawyer, an old cover up and there you have it.
Not exactly totally predictable but not particularly exciting either. For me it was not anywhere as good as the reviews suggested. Good enough that I will possibly try another book by the author but not right away.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
21 reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
If you liked L.A Confidential
11 Mar 2002
Format:Hardcover
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.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Tough but rewarding
13 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
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)
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Perhaps the best from Michael Malone
9 April 2003
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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!
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