Buckley knows how to treat a ‘First Lady’

  You want funny? Christopher Buckley sure can do funny. He sure can do intelligent, complex and eminently entertaining as well (no surprise, really, considering he’s the son of the late Pat and William F. Buckley) — and the combination is killer, as he proves in “No Way to Treat a First Lady.”
  I encountered this as an audio book. The person who reads a book for audio distribution has an extremely important role. He or she can make the book far more or less enjoyable depending on not just elocution and enunciation but also conveying various emotions with the voice, much as a stage or screen actor does. (And in fact, most of the best readers are actors; some audio books — “The Da Vinci Code” comes to mind — are read by several actors, to provide increased identification with each character. Sometimes the reader’s success has little to do with his or her familiarity with the work; one of the worst examples I can remember is John Grisham reading his own “Bleachers.”)
  But I digress mightily. Grover Gardner is the reader for the audio version of “No Way to Treat a First Lady,” and he is extremely adept at capturing and communicating Buckley’s writing style.
  The premise of the book is this: Elizabeth Taylor MacMann, the first lady of the United States, is accused of killing her serial-philanderer husband, the president, with a skillfully aimed Paul Revere spittoon. Beth MacMann hasn’t exactly been a popular first lady — her nickname is Lady Beth Mac — and she seems headed straight to a conviction.
  So she turns to high-profile defense attorney Boyce “Shameless” Baylor, with whom she has had a rather unique relationship. And not a dull moment follows.
  “Lady” is peppered with veiled comparisons to public figures past and present, which gives the novel the added air of political commentary, but only subtly so.
  Buckley has been quoted as saying that in comparison to his father’s legacy, his own 14 novels seem a minimal contribution. No disrespect to the late great conservative lion, but never was Daddy Buckley as entertaining as his scion.