Slow Dollar

No. 9 in the Judge Deborah Knott series. This one was a carnival ride...no, really. Maron likes to pick a little world and make it real for us; she's done it with the North Carolina furniture industry; the realm of pottery-making; the feud between fishermen and land-developers along the Atlantic coast....and now, she has taken us into the caravans and grub wagons of the small traveling carnival, where humans are no more nor less greedy, venial and murderous than they are anywhere else. Deborah's family and love life continue to provide emotional ups and downs for her and for us. May it ever be thus. This series is not getting old.
Review written July 2014

Carnival comes to Colleton County and provides a corpse with its mouth stuffed with quarters. When the body is identified, a relationship with the Knott's family is discovered. Solving the crime gets a bit untidy with another murder and needs to be resolved before the carnival moves on. As always a good story from this fine author with little twists sprinkled throughout so that the reader sustains their interest.

Summer may be winding down but the heat is still on in Colleton County, North Carolina, the mythical piedmont county at the center of Judge Deborah Knott’s circuit. It may be October but the days are still hot and the nights are still warm. It is the season of county fairs and harvest festivals, and Deborah Knott is only one of hundreds of people to show up at the local carnival to ride the tilt-a-whirls, eat funnel cakes and try to win a stuffed animal.

But she is the only one to find a dead body behind the change booth that has eaten all her quarters.

This installment in the widely popular Deborah Knott series plunges readers into the weird and fascinating world of the traveling carnival. “Carny people” are a breed apart, a show more hold-over from a bygone era and the last vestige of a gypsy culture in rural America. They come to town for a few weeks, set up their rides and games and rigged contests, and then disappear for a year, their pockets heavy with your quarters.

Because they have no ties with the community, everyone- including Judge Knott- assumes that the young man she found beaten to death was killed by someone else with the Carnival. After all, it isn’t like he could have known anyone in town, could he? But a bit of investigation turns up the fact that young Brazos Ames was making a decent living on the side by purchasing the contents of storage lockers at auction and selling them on eBay. There was nothing illegal about the practice, but everyone has a few secrets they keep closeted away, and Brazos Ames seemed to have come across a fair number of them. Suddenly, he seems to have more connections with the locals that any of them care to admit.

It is a sticky situation for Judge Knott, who knows that most of her extensive family had been through the gates on the night of the murder and that a few of her kin weren’t admitting it. Complicating things even further is the fact that the matriarch of the carnival family- one Tallahassee Ames- had been in her court only a few weeks earlier, seeking damages from two local rowdies who had tried to destroy one of her rides. The court case had been pretty straight forward and the woman had won her suit. Judge Knott had forgotten the entire thing until now, when she has to face Tallahassee Ames not as a confident and tough businesswoman but as a bereft mother who seems shocked, but not surprised, that her son has gotten himself killed.

The title of Maron’s book comes from an old carny saying that “a quick dime is better than a slow dollar”. It is one of many aspects of carnival life that the author fairly revels in: “…there were enough neon tubes and chasing lights to put stars in children’s eyes and make their grandparents remember their own first carnivals. Barkers with hand-held cordless microphones or makeshift megaphones stood before colorfully lit stands, exhorting people to step right up to the best game around –“a winner every time, folks!”. Even the slightly seamy side of the life- the trailer life, the cracked paint, the games slightly skewed so no one could really win the expensive prizes- is related with more relish than you’ll ever see on a Colleton county hot dog. If fact, the author is so enamored of her subject that she included a glossary of carny terms at the back of the book, in case reader’s hadn’t caught that a “donniker” was a toilet by the context of the sentence.

The real pleasure of reading Margaret Maron, though, is that readers won’t need that glossary. The author is a fine writer, in or out of the mystery genre, who excels in creating that all too rare creature- a novel in a series that stands perfectly fine on its own. Readers who have been following the career of Judge Knott through Maron’s nine other books and multiple Edgar Awards will find themselves once again surrounded by Deborah’s extended and extensive and exuberant family. But anyone new to the series will have no trouble getting their bearings. It is rather like going to a family reunion for the first time- a bewildering group of people is soon sorted out by a few simple introductions and your basic welcoming Southern hospitality. Maron doesn’t bother with long explanations or past histories unless it is relevant to the story. For the rest, she has a family tree at the beginning of the book to help newcomers navigate.

What really carries this story is the setting in all of its loving detail, and the plausibility of the plot. Maron has a fine grasp of the kinds of things even very ordinary people prefer to lock away, and a good idea of what could happen if the skeletons in our closets suddenly started showing up for sale on eBay. It’s food for thought, and not just a few funnel cakes. Slow Dollar only proves why Margaret Maron is North Carolina’s most popular novelists, in any genre. show less

A moonlit autumn night brings out half the county to fill the Tilt-O-Whirl with squealing riders and the dirt around Polly's Pitch Plate with losers' quarters. But in an air nostalgically sweet with caramel apple and spun sugar, one crooked game ends with a brutal death ... and Judge Deborah Knott will discover more than a body. For beneath the carnival's razzle-dazzle surface swirl dark secrets that Deborah has kept hidden for almost twenty years. Now as family loyalties war with the demands of the law, she must struggle to win a carny's trust-before the killer pins a bull's-eye on yet another victim.

I liked this one, which had a side of Deborah/Dwight to spice up the character arcs. Secret pining is so adorable. The mystery was threaded with themes of family secrets revealed, family found, and healing.

Dwight has a girlfriend, sorta. And the Carnival's in town, and somehow with it come new Knott family members. I'm pretty sure at this point that the Knott family is solely responsible for the over population of the world.

There's also a murder of one of the carnies and that brings Dwight into the novel. Also, as usual, Deborah gets herself oh so very mixed up in the investigation that looks at both the carnies and the townies for who the killer is.

I have to say that, unfortunately some of the carnival slang went right over my head (I'm still not exactly sure why a bathroom/toilet is a donnicker). It probably would have helped if I had realized that there was a glossary in the back too, oops.

My favorite part of the book was the Dwight show more subplot. Although I like the character of Deb, Dwight has always been my favorite character in the Knott series, he's both an extremely complicated and yet very simple character. And in this novel not only does he get a doosey of a story line, but it's a bit of a cliffhanger too. Very nice. show less

I really like the Judge Deborah Knott books but this one was excellent. There is a murder or two to solve, a lot (I mean A LOT) of family lore and even some family mysteries involved. And what would a Judge Knott book be without some romantic intrigue? This book delivers in spades.

I was glad to see more of Kezzie, Deborah's father, in this book, I missed him in the last one.

The story here revolves around one of the Summer (or in the South's case Fall) traveling carnivals that come to town. Murder ensues and Deborah is worried that some of her kin are involved - maybe not with the murder but could they be covering something up for someone?

There is a lot of carnival lore and history that was just fascinating. Ms. Maron didn't pull any show more punches, there is a lot that is unsavory in the carnival world but she also brings to life people who do this work and the hard life they live with just a few months work to survive for the entire year.

I'm really looking forward to the next in the series. show less