Margaret Maron (1938–2021)

The last of Maron's Deborah Knott series, which I've been hoarding because I knew there would be no more. It was a good one, since the author planned to end the series and obviously gave a lot of thought about how to do it. There's the requisite mysterious death, and the usual family stuff, but in this one Deborah sets out to learn a bit more about her parents' first meeting and courtship than she has ever known before, prompted by contemplation of an engraved cigarette lighter her mother show more had kept since WWII. Why did her dying mother tell Deborah that the man who gave her the lighter at a USO dance saved her life? Who was he, and who was his lost love? How DID a widowed bootlegger with 8 young sons persuade the daughter of a prominent lawyer to marry him?
2018 show less

Nifty story of a retiring lawyer who ends up shot dead in his office, surrounded by scattered and partially burned "special" files. He seems to have been engaging in some creative and selective blackmail, setting up a tidy retirement account off-shore. But which of those special clients finally decided enough was enough? I love how Maron reveals all the dirty little secrets and then lets her detective turn a blind eye to the harmless ones as she eliminates the victims as suspects. Until the show more last one, of course. This one ended with an unconventional bang, which I thought was mildly brilliant.
2017 show less

While off-duty, Lieutenant Sigrid Harald intervenes in a street situation where a young woman seems to be in danger from the man she's with, and ends up in the hospital herself, with some fairly serious knife wounds. Meanwhile, her partner, Detective Tildon, reluctantly prepares to compete in a cribbage tournament at a swanky small hotel in Manhattan. When one of the cribbage boards turns out to hold a bomb, the investigation into who is responsible, and who was actually the intended target, show more takes many strange turns, some of them reaching fairly far back into the past. Good reading, as always with Maron. Sigrid loosens up just a skosh and realizes that a touch of femininity isn't necessarily fatal to her career. It did puzzle me throughout just exactly why Maron got her main character knifed in the first few pages; neither the crime she was preventing nor the injury itself seemed to serve any real purpose in the story, nor was it used to distract or mislead the amateur detective holding the book, if you take my meaning. *shrug* She so rarely does this to me that I'm going to give Maron a "get out of author jail free" card this time. show less

Number 16 in the Judge Deborah Knott of North Carolina series.

I’m a big fan of this series, because I think that in Deborah Knott, Maron has created a different female police procedural protagonist--sharp, independent, witty, feminist, steel magnolia who subscribes to many of the traditional values such as marriage and strong family ties. She’s also a “yellow dog” Democrat (meaning rather than vote Republican, she’ll vote for a yellow dog if it’s on the Democratic ticket) in a show more Democratic district in a state that has gone Republican since the Dixiecrats walked out (think Strom Thurmond). I thought of Maron on Election Night in 2008 when North Carolina barely, just barely went Democratic for the first time in nearly 50 years.

She also has a huge family--11 brothers with wives children and grandchildren, the offspring of a notorious bootlegger, her father Kezzie Knott. The very presence of that massive family provides enough spare characters and situations to keep the books lively and full of interest. Character development is one of her best points.

Maron is superb with local color, which is another attraction of the series. Colleton County is fictional, but she has final more or less admitted that it’s copied from Johnston County, where she lives. Her writing is very good to excellent and she has a fine ear for dialogue. Her plots are pretty standard, but they hold up and furnish plenty of tension to keep the books interesting and the series one I want to continue to read.

Usually although not in every book, Maron comments on some social or even environmental issue connected with the plot. But the issues, while developed for the setting and situation, are never resolved in a standard way. In this book, which takes place just before Christmas, the issue is teen use of cell phones and text messaging while driving, and the story opens with separate accidents and four teen deaths in which the use of cell phones is implicated.

Maron does a good job with teens, and the story is believable. But as usual, it doesn’t resolve in an expected way. It’s not the best in the series, but it’s still a very fine read from a very fine author who has wisely matured and developed her protagonist and other characters as the years have rolled on, giving the reader the satisfying feeling of growing up with all of tthem. Highly recommended. show less