Bloody Kin

BLOODY KIN is a transition novel as Margaret Maron moves from New York to North Carolina. It gives the reader a look at Dwight Bryant and his family before the opening of the Deborah Knott series. An excellent read, as Kate Honeycutt moves from New York to live on the farm owned by her deceased husband, Jake. His great-uncle is worried that Kate will evict him from the only home he has ever know and makes her new living arrangements as difficult as possible. But Jake's death was not an accident as Kate soon learns after discovering the body of one of Jake's war buddies in the cellar of the building she plans to use as a studio. Now someone wants Kate dead before Dwight Bryant can discover the truth behind the killings. Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS.

Margaret Maron is a great storyteller, and although she has written a series based in New York, North Carolina appears to be where her heart is. Although Deborah Knott does not appear in "Bloody Kin," we get a different, more family-oriented view of Dwight Bryant, so we feel that we are on familiar ground. Our heroine, Kate, is portrayed as a woman determined to make a place for herself in a strange land after her husband, Jake, is killed, and she does so admirably. Jake's family members, however, the few that are still alive, are not helpful in this regard. The child is a welcome ray of sunshine in an otherwise dismal situation, and Kate establishes a wonderful rapport with her. Another reviewer was apparently horrified that Kate smoked during her pregnancy; on the other hand, the story takes place in the very heart of tobacco country, and I was more impressed by how little she smoked. As a story that stands apart from both the Sigrid Harrald series and the Deborah Knott stories, "Bloody Kin" is a fine read.

In this novel, the main characters are not the Knott family, but Dwight is still around to solve the mystery. Kate inherits her husband's homeplace after his murder, but his murder isn't the only murder or the only mystery.