With vivid detail and engaging, credible characters, Maron's series featuring North Carolina district court judge Deborah Knott (Edgar winner Bootlegger's Daughter, etc.) brings to life fictional Colleton County and chronicles a charming but rapidly changing South. Here, the background is the suburbanization of the rural countryside less than an hour by superhighway from Raleigh. A few days after Dallas Stancil refuses to sell his land to a speculator, his stepson and wife murder him. Then, Dallas's peripatetic cousin Allen, the devil from Deborah's past, comes to town. Several days later, Dallas's father, Jap, is killed just before he can divide the property between Merrilee Grimes, his late wife's niece, and Allen. So who killed Jap, and who gets the Stancil land‘Dallas's widow? Allen? Merrilee and her husband, Pete? Billy Wall, Jap's partner in the produce business? Dick Sutterly, a real estate developer who has a signed deed to Jap's property? Suspicions extend to Deborah's own family when one of her 11 brothers, visiting from California, reveals that he's lost his job and plans to sell his acreage, which abuts Jap's. In the end, the answer derives from a combination of greed, fear and ignorance of the intricate laws of inheritance. Maron eloquently describes different behaviors toward the land, from stewardship to despoliation. The old-fashioned warmth of the extended Knott family and Maron's well-constructed plot make this series a standout. Mystery Guild selection. (Sept.)
From: Reed Elsevier Inc.
Copyright Reed Business Information
Maron returns to fictional Colleton County, North Carolina, the setting of The Bootlegger's Daughter (Mysterious, 1992). After someone murders one of Deborah Knott's childhood friends, and then another, suspicion falls on Deborah's father. A winning tale of closeted skeletons and family feuds.
From: Reed Elsevier Inc.
Copyright Reed Business Information
Writer Margaret Maron grew up in rural North Carolina and later lived in Brooklyn, New York. She has mined her background to create the settings for two successful crime series. A series set in New York features Detective Sigrid Harald and a series set in North Carolina stars Deborah Knott.
Bootlegger's Daughter, the first book in the second series, won the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards for best mystery in 1992.
(Bowker Author Biography) Margaret Maron, Margaret Maron grew up on a farm near Raleigh, North Carolina and lived for many years in New York. She is the creator of the Deborah Knott mystery series that is set in the South. The first, "Bootlegger's Daughter," was a bestseller and won the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards for Best Mystery of 1992. Other novels in the series have received high praise: " Southern Discomfort" was nominated for an Agatha Award, "Shooting at Loons" was nominated for both the Agatha and Anthony Awards, and "Up Jumps the Devil" was nominated for an Agatha Award. The character, Deborah Knott, begins as an attorney and daughter of an infamous North Carolina bootlegger and progresses to become a District Court Judge.
Maron is also the creator of the heroine detective Sigrid Harald. The first of the Sigrid Harald series was "One Coffee With" and was followed by "Death of a Butterfly," "Death in Blue Folders," "The Right Jack," "Baby Doll Games," "Corpus Christmas," "Past Imperfect" and "Fugitive Colors." She also wrote "Bloody Kin," which tells the story of a pregnant woman whose husbands accidental death is actually a deliberate crime that is linked to his tour of duty in Vietnam.
(Bowker Author Biography)
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