Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Middle East conflict live updates: Blinken calls proposed Israeli cease-fire deal ‘extraordinarily generous’

The Rangers swept the Capitals, and it’s time for the new core to take charge

Jayden Daniels is latest in Washington’s checkered history of first-round QBs

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

Facts in the Trump courtroom v. ‘facts’ in the court of public opinion

An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India

Spanish leader Sánchez to stay in power after resignation drama

Scotland leader Humza Yousaf resigns in latest setback for independence 

Hunter Biden attorney threatens litigation against Fox News

Harsh deportation tools are just fine with many Americans

Carolyn Hax: Is checking his phone the best way to prove he isn’t lying anymore?

Ask Amy: Boyfriend’s CPA dad did my taxes wrong for years

Miss Manners: I think kindergarten graduations are ‘ridiculous’

Soldiers reunite with their pets from overseas: ‘It meant everything to me’

Chiropractor works on giraffe, is nuzzled: ‘Giraffes are just giant dogs?’

An SUV was in flames on the highway. Strangers saved the driver.  

Meta’s oversight body prepares to lay off workers

An AI blood test purports to diagnose postpartum depression

A TikTok ban could also end short-form video as we’ve come to know it

Where seas are rising at alarming speed 

The new face of flooding

In photos: Tornadoes wreak havoc in Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa

The Rick Steves guide to life

The sad, stale state of in-flight vegetarian meals

Is Southwest about to end its free-for-all seating?

Is student loan debt an emergency? Take our quiz.

Humans might need to re-engineer the climate

The Fed’s fight against inflation needs to lose the dot plot

Trump

Marion Ettlinger

Michael Malone, a novelist and television writer who moved seamlessly between genres, writing serious comic novels, comic serious novels and best-selling mystery novels — in addition to working on the soap opera “One Life to Live,” which drew critical acclaim during his run as head writer for its zany humor and sensitive explorations of social issues — died Aug. 19 at his home in Clinton, Conn. He was 79.

He had pancreatic cancer, said his daughter, Maggie Malone.

A North Carolina native who wrote frequently about his home state, Mr. Malone published more than a dozen novels, including the rollicking 1983 picaresque “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B003TFE05Y&amp;preview=newtab&amp;linkCode=kpe&amp;ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_KMXPRTNJB7AEY9XEV6NA&amp;tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">Handling Sin</a>,” a retelling of “Don Quixote” in the American South, and “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B002361LB6&amp;preview=newtab&amp;linkCode=kpe&amp;ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_XEV0EED1DVZVTD3MPKWR&amp;tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank">Uncivil Seasons</a>,” which was released later that same year and marked his first foray into the mystery genre. The book introduced readers to a pair of mismatched North Carolina police officers, the junk-food-devouring Cudberth “Cuddy” Mangum and the aristocratic Justin Bartholomew Savile V, whom New York Times reviewer Evan Hunter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/13/books/detective-from-a-founding-family.html" target="_blank">deemed</a> “two of the most memorable police detectives ever to appear in mystery fiction.”

Mr. Malone went on to write two more Justin and Cuddy mysteries, including “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00CMTZESA&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_MNP0C1BQJMZ2RXHZHAYD&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>Time’s Witness</a>” (1989), which explored the relationship between racism and capital punishment, and the bestseller “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B001RK0N9U&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_6HK7MQQW2JW1DD9R8EZ6&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>First Lady</a>” (2002), about the “Guess Who Killer,” a serial murderer targeting women in fictional Hillston, N.C. He was working on a fourth novel in the series when he died, his daughter said.

Before he turned to the mystery genre, Mr. Malone was best known for writing comic novels with a sprawling cast of characters and offbeat humor. His <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/05/26/love-in-the-suburbs/e04fea55-d27c-4e52-abdc-3bbd51292acc/" target=_blank>1980 book</a>, “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0050164Q8&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_BT3VPG6DBEB7CQ3G3JTE&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>Dingley Falls</a>,” was set in a small Connecticut town and featured characters with names like Habzi Rabies, Rich Rage and Mrs. Canopy, an arts patron who goes to the cemetery to speak at her late husband’s grave. “She did not, necessarily, assume that he lay listening beneath it,” Mr. Malone wrote. “For that matter, he had rarely listened when he had sat across from her at dinner, or before the living room fire. The change was that he no longer got up and went to bed before she finished.”

Mr. Malone said he sought to capture the spirit of a place in his work, and found that crime fiction enabled him to depict a broader cross-section of the communities he wrote about. “I’m interested in presenting a world that is politically and socially engaged,” he told the Guardian newspaper, “and once you’re writing about a police department you’re writing about social problems, you’re into the whole politics of a region. By making your characters policemen you engage them with every rank of society.”

Sourcebooks

It was partly so that he could tell socially relevant stories to a national audience that Mr. Malone left the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught fiction writing, to join “One Life to Live” as head writer in 1991. “I couldn’t resist it,” he told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/08/books/those-undiscovered-forgeries.html">the New York Times</a>. “I think Dickens would have done it. I make up characters and there they are in the flesh. I have my own Shakespeare company!”

Working under executive producer Linda Gottlieb, with whom he had previously partnered on an unproduced movie, Mr. Malone helped shape an experimental but popular few seasons of the ABC soap opera. The series featured eccentric characters and idiosyncratic storylines — one involved an Egyptologist, a jewel thief and a sex therapist — while also delving into weighty issues such as sexual assault.

Mr. Malone and his writing team won a 1994 Daytime Emmy Award after crafting a series of widely discussed episodes about a college student, Marty Saybrooke (played by Susan Haskell), who is gang raped by a jock and his fraternity brothers, and who later brings her attackers to trial. Mr. Malone had previously made headlines for a story arc that featured the AIDS Memorial Quilt and centered on a teenage boy (Ryan Phillippe) who is bullied for being gay.

In a 1992 interview with <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-28-ca-6184-story.html" target=_blank>the Los Angeles Times</a>, journalist Freeman Gunter, a managing editor of Soap Opera Weekly and veteran of the gay press, described the plotline as “a breakthrough,” saying that it showed “what it’s like to be gay in a hostile world.”

Mr. Malone said he hoped the show would increase acceptance of gay people and other victims of AIDS.

“There was no way ever on God’s green earth that five million people a week would be reading my novels,” <a href="https://indyweek.com/culture/archives/last-exit-llanview-michael-malone-looks-back-work-one-life-live-ends-today/" target=_blank>he told</a> the North Carolina newspaper Indy Week, “but they might see Viki,” the show’s longtime protagonist, “carrying that AIDS quilt.”

Mr. Malone left the show in 1996 and worked as head writer for the NBC soap opera “Another World” before returning to “One Life to Live” in 2003 and 2004. During his second stint as head writer, he worked on a suspense novel, “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01AL4C98K&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_X5ATHY6JVCT3K1K9HVX9&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>The Killing Club</a>,” that was tied into the series, with Mr. Malone and one of the show’s characters, Marcie Walsh, both listed as authors. The book made national bestseller lists and employed some of the attention-grabbing techniques that Mr. Malone picked up from his years working in television.

“My chapters used to close out very quietly; now, they may end with, ‘Get out of the car! There’s a bomb in the car!’” he told <a href="https://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/mmalone.html" target=_blank>January Magazine</a>, a literary publication. “It’s the hook trick that I learned from television. Not a bad lesson to learn, either.”

Maureen Quilligan

The oldest of six children, Michael Christopher Malone was born in Durham, N.C., on Nov. 22, 1942. His parents divorced when he was young, and he grew up with his mother, a fourth-grade teacher who was deaf. Mr. Malone served as her ears, developing observational skills that he later used in his novels. His father was a psychiatrist, and Mr. Malone liked to say that he was in the same profession, except he listened to “the voices in my head” instead of “the voices on my couch.”

By age 9, he was writing plays, including a 42-act epic called “The Prince of the Chinese Elephants.” “To this day, my siblings who live in North Carolina will flee the state if I say anything about putting on a play, because they know they’re going to have to dress up as a bumblebee or something and be in it,” he <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=107017897">told NPR in 2009</a>. By the time he got to college he thought he might like to pursue philosophy instead of drama; a professor suggested he switch to studying literature, noting that Mr. Malone seemed more interested in philosophers’ lives than their theories.

Mr. Malone graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1964, received a master’s degree from the school two years later and went on to pursue a PhD in English at Harvard University, where he met his wife, Maureen Quilligan, a scholar of Renaissance literature who partly inspired his first novel, “<a href="https://amzn.to/3dS1USM" target=_blank>Painting the Roses Red</a>” (1975), about a young woman in 1960s California.

As Mr. Malone told it, he wrote the novel to avoid writing his dissertation, a study of American cinema that later formed the basis of his book “<a href="https://amzn.to/3dDSytS" target=_blank>Heroes of Eros: Male Sexuality in the Movies</a>” (1979). He never got his PhD, but he went on to teach at schools including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale and Duke, where he led a film class in which students were divided into teams to write and produce their own 20-minute movies. Their films were honored at a “Golden Apples” ceremony that Mr. Malone modeled after the Academy Awards, with a best-director honor presented by the Duke men’s basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski.

Mr. Malone split his time for many years between Connecticut and North Carolina, where he and his wife settled in the small town of Hillsborough, a literary hot spot that was also home to writers including David Payne, Frances Mayes and Allan Gurganus, with whom he performed an annual two-man stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” “When I got here,” Mr. Malone told <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-mecca-for-authors-in-hillsborough-n-c-1410972714" target=_blank>the Wall Street Journal</a>, “I started writing like I was set on fire.”

His other novels included “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B003TFE0B8&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_1CE8CAN6W7PP8CBRTMFX&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>Foolscap</a>” (1991), about a university professor commissioned to write the biography of an aging playwright, and “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B003PJ7AU6&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_KV1WEYGMKB8AKT4N0C9E&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>The Four Corners of the Sky</a>” (2009), a family saga and adventure epic involving a missing treasure, a con man and a naval aviator.

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife of 47 years, Quilligan; a sister and half sister; a brother and half brother; and a granddaughter.

Mr. Malone recalled that “the most important thing ever said to me as a writer” came from author Eudora Welty, whom he met at a Yale literary gathering in the late 1970s. When Welty learned that Mr. Malone had written three novels, none set in his native North Carolina, she advised him to “let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.” He soon started working on “Uncivil Seasons,” which he described as “the first novel of mine to be set in that Red Clay country, that landscape of my childhood imagination.”

A few years later, he drove from his home in North Carolina to Welty’s house in Jackson, Miss., to say thank you. He sat there for hours but “was too shy to go ring the doorbell,” he <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112189628505391384" target=_blank>told the Journal</a>. Eventually he drove home. He didn’t tell Welty about the episode until years later, when he happened to spot her in the lobby of New York’s Algonquin Hotel. “She looked at me and smiled,” he recalled, “and she said: ‘Oh honey, was that you? I almost called the police on you.’”

Correction: An earlier version of this obituary incorrectly said Michael Malone was born Nov. 1. He was born Nov. 22. The article has been corrected.

Society of Professional Journalists D.C.'s Dateline Award for series, 2019

Society of Professional Obituary Writers' obituary writer of the year, 2019

University of Chicago, AB in English and philosophy

Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago.

Harrison Smith

washpost

the-washington-post

Michael Malone, Known For His Work on the Daytime Drama ONE LIFE TO LIVE, died on August 19, 2022. For OBIT.

other

Search Death Notices

Place a Death Notice

Request a News Obituary

Obituaries

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/media/book_industry

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/mass_media/television

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/mass_media

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature/fiction

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/media

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Tito's KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Johnson & Johnson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ The Offer KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bed Bath & Beyond KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: USAA KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Discover Card KWs – EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_Academic & Professional Education_legacyaux_1o8

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Affluent_legacyaux_eqw

advertising/B2_Agriculture/Food Production_legacyaux_PI3

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Arts & Entertainment_legacyaux_btb

advertising/B2_Asian Lifestyle Content_legacyaux_im0

advertising/B2_Automotive Interest 2.5.15_legacyaux_jqs

advertising/B2_Awards Shows_legacyaux_wib

advertising/B2_Books, Comics and other Literature_legacyaux_p1a

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Kyndryl KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Capital One (One Tech) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Louis Vuitton KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/United Airlines KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Diageo - Johnnie Walker KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ Client List: Mercedes EQS KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/FlexForm KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple Marcom KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/1st: Keywords+IPTC: Arts/Entertainment/Documentaries

client-blocklists/Client List: Organon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Facebook KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: GOLDMAN SACHS SEC KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Hulu KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Mastercard KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Beto for Texas KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/LV Queen 2022 Neg KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Synchrony Financial KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Hermes KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ukraine-Russia (Apple News) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Showtime KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple TV+ KW – INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ronald McDonald House KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client Neg KW List: Omega KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Cancer_legacyaux_7f3

advertising/B2_Celebrity_legacyaux_sg5

client-blocklists/PMI KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Classical Music Keywords_legacyaux_zev

client-blocklists/Marcus Goldman Sachs Neg KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

advertising/TV/Film

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Culture and Tradition_legacyaux_kfx

client-blocklists/Client List: Citibank KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Education Methodology and Innovation_legacyaux_ydc

client-blocklists/Citibank KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/SAP KW List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Family Matter 2.12.15_legacyaux_lf3

client-blocklists/Client List: Fidelity Investments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Turbo Tax KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_Health and Beauty_legacyaux_3fv

client-blocklists/CME KW List 2022 - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Holiday_legacyaux_o3u

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/National Instruments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Intel KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_LGBT & Same Sex Marriage_legacyaux_l3o

advertising/B2_Lifestyle_legacyaux_ipv

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T Digital Divide  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Samsung 2021 KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Google PG Competitor KWs - EXCLUDES ALL 

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Shopping_legacyaux_sa6

advertising/B2_Society_legacyaux_0cz

advertising/B2_Theater, Dance and Spoken Word_legacyaux_3qg

advertising/B2_TV and Movies_legacyaux_vat

advertising/B2_Video, TV and Movies_legacyaux_1t5

advertising/B2_Pop Culture_legacyaux_ei3

prism://prism.query/obits-stream&limit=20

The Washington Post Obituaries section has Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia obituaries, appreciations and death notices as well as historical obits and celebrity obituaries.

prism://prism.query/site,/entertainment/tv&limit=20

TV & Streaming - The Washington Post

Coverage of tv shows and streaming from The Washington Post. The latest headlines, interviews and reviews of tv and streaming shows.

Television

prism://prism.query/site,/entertainment&limit=20

Arts & Entertainments

The latest news on entertainments and arts from The Washington Post. Breaking news and in-depth coverage of movies, music, tv, art, theater and video games.

prism://prism.query/ap-articles-by-site-id,/entertainment&limit=3

prism://prism.query/site,/entertainment/books&limit=10

Books

Book reviews and news about new books, best sellers, authors, literature, biographies, memoirs, children's books, fiction, non-fiction and more. Search Washington, DC area books events, reviews and bookstores from the Washington Post.

Obituaries;Television;Arts & Entertainments;Books

Michael Malone, wide-ranging novelist and TV writer, dies at 79

He wrote best-selling family sagas and mystery novels, and also examined homophobia and sexual assault as head writer for ‘One Life to Live’