Kirkus评论

Maas (The Valachi Papers, Serpico) has found another indomitable hero--female, this time--in Marie Ragghianti, first woman to chair the Tennessee Board of Pardon and Paroles. A teen-age Daytona Beach beauty queen, Marie married young, had three children, left her battering husband at age 25, worked her way through Vanderbilt U., and in 1974 took a job in state politics. In 1976 Democratic Governor Ray Blanton appointed her to head the Parole Board, and bit by bit she uncovered a scam run by her bosses, all the way up to the Statehouse: under-the-counter sale of paroles and pardons to state prisoners. Maas documents Marie's struggle with her conscience and with party hacks who smeared her, set her up, and finally threw her out. She sued and, in a dramatic trial, won reinstatement; an arduous, apparently fruitless FBI investigation she set off finally skewered the crooks higher up. Her loyalty to the people rather than the Party vindicated, Marie concluded that ""no matter what anyone said, it did pay to fight for what was right."" Still, since contract-murder of key witnesses go unsolved, villains go free, some to resume power, and Marie, the reinstatement order notwithstanding, was forced to leave the state after all, the moral of the story--""justice triumphed over injustice""--rings a little fiat. Though the account is sometimes mired in deadening details and the moral stops short of the mark, this saga of one small feisty woman is good old-fashioned, ""you can fight city hall"" stuff--heartening if not wholly persuasive. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.