Executive Privilege

What a concept: the President of the United States as a possible serial killer. And ace suspense writer Margolin pulls it off beautifully, with the help of narrator Jonathan Davis, who is the perfect choice to cool off a hot concept and make it human (as he did with Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash). Davis' fine third-person narration is matched by his performance as Dana Cutler, a beautiful and sharp D.C. private detective who is hired to follow a young college student who ends up dead after a secret meeting with president Charles Farrington. Davis also excels as an Oregon lawyer who is working on the Death Row appeal of a convicted killer. The inmate says he was framed for the murder of a teenager who, at the time of her death, worked for then-governor Farrington. A Harper hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 7).