Of course, we’re all proud of our Carolina Meadows Library, and rightly so. With so many volumes on our shelves, a very effective professional library system for retrieval, and computer links for searching, I find myself going to the public library and buying books off the web less and less.

Still, I confess it’s hard to walk past the “Book Cellar” at Raleigh-Durham airport with all those musty pre-worn books on sale half-price or less without reverting to old habits—browsing and, yes, even buying.  And so, before a long wait for a delayed flight to Charlotte last month, I dipped into that pool and found a back copy of Philip Margolin’s “Executive Privilege.” I really like Margolin. He’s a fellow former Portland Oregonian. In fact he lives just one block away from where we did on Council Crest, though we never met him.  His “Capitol Murder” (2010) and “Supreme Justice” (2012) build on a story hatched in “Executive Privilege,” which I had never read.

I tore into the first hundred pages. Then I must have left the book in the seat pocket of the plane in Indianapolis.  

I was bereft.  Farrington, the candidate, had just cheated on his wife, Claire, and was covering it up. And what was going to happen to Charlotte, who had stolen some campaign secrets for him? By the time of “Executive Privilege,” things had moved on too far for the detente to be included, even in the flashbacks.

When I returned to our wonderful Carolina Meadows home and stopped in the Library, I spotted “Capitol Crimes” on the “new books” shelf. Aha, I thought, and went to the stacks to the mysteries section—just on the off chance.

And there it was.

Almost pristine.

“Executive Privilege.” 

The jacket claims:  “It takes a really crafty story teller to put people on the edge of their seats and keep them there.” I add, though, that it takes some really crafty (volunteer) librarians to make it possible!