The Governor’s Lady

Readers hoping for a savvy look inside the life of a politician will be disappointed by this simplistic tale of the trial by fire of Cooper Lanier, a new Southern (the state remains unnamed) governor; Lanier is both the daughter and wife of prior governors. With her husband Pickett gearing up for a White House run, Lanier has a chance to show what she has to offer the public after a narrow victory. It takes too long to get any handle on what she stands for—Inman, lazily, refers to Lanier’s inaugural address, which she wrote herself, without presenting even a brief excerpt. And it’s hard to be impressed with a chief executive who doesn’t bother to read through her briefing book—a failure that comes back to bite her when she’s handed her first crisis: her state is hit by a crippling snowstorm, but her plan to mobilize the National Guard is vetoed by her husband. Inman (Captain Saturday) doesn’t sweat the details, and the psychodrama between Lanier and her estranged mother, who conveniently dies just as Lanier takes office, is as banal as the rest of the plot. (Sept. 10)