Hard Row

Another outstanding entry for the Judge Deobrah Knott series by Margaret Maron. As a long time fan of both her Deborah Knott and Sigrid Harald series I always look forward to a new book with anticipation of a great read and I wasn't disappointed. Ms Maron has a true understandig of a small town life that is rapidly disappearing as such communities grow and expand under outside pressures. At the same time she explores the domestic interactions of a large and loving family as it struggles with the same type of growth and expansion. As always her mystery storyline is well integrated into the personal story of Deborah Knott and her family. This is a great addition to the series.

All's well in the Deborah Knott series, to me, when Deborah is sitting on the bench as judge deciding cases. Hard Row is well endowed with such scenes. If you are a fan of the series, you would be foolish to skip this one: It's a gem. But I've noticed that some published reviews by prominent sources contain spoilers about this book. Be careful what you read in advance or you may lose some of the fun of this rewarding mystery. The better mystery series with women as the detectives find a way to combine a look at family life with the cases at hand. Margaret Maron is particularly adept in Hard Row in developing that family element as Deborah and Dwight Bryant get used to married life with Dwight's son Cal who is eight. There is also a sequence of fun scenes involving Deborah's family trying to figure out what crops to grow now that tobacco isn't very profitable any more. As usual, I was grateful for the reminder facing page one about who all of Deborah's relatives are. Ms. Maron also does a fine job with exploring the challenges that face modern farmers as they balance their natural desire to earn a profit with the important need to be a decent person. You'll find out about the role that prejudice can play in this regard as well. As the book opens, someone is strewing body parts all over the county. Dwight keeps getting called out to investigate the next one. Will they ever find a whole corpse? Deborah is also troubled by defendants and litigants who don't seem to understand what they are supposed to do in the legal process. You would think that a married couple would share enough pillow talk to make solving mysteries pretty easy, but that's not the case for this pair as ethical considerations often require keeping knowledge separate from one another. But Ms. Maron is a genius at developing plot complications that allow the correct information to get into the right hands. The book is also filled with good humor, always kicked off by the friendly advice quoted in each chapter's opening from Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890. By using quite a few different narrators, you also are able to enjoy many perspectives on various characters and their actions, such as Reid's habits when it comes to umbrellas. This is a very fine book. It would work well as a standalone if you haven't read any books in the series before. But I do recommend that you start in the beginning, rather than here. You have a treat ahead of you if you do.

After a departure from Colleton County in Winter's Child, Judge Deborah Knott is back on the bench. This is a comfortable return to the series, with Deborah and Dwight adjusting to having Cal live with them full-time. The book is a well-balanced tale with equal parts focusing on the adjustment the family must make, the crime itself, and the investigations (both on Deborah's part and Dwight's part). As is always welcome, Deborah's large family makes an appearance, which although not critical, is entertaining. I also think it lets Maron offer some commentary on the changes that Colleton County is undergoing. Maron hits all the right notes in this latest offering, and adds a few new ones. One of those new notes is the introduction of Sheriff Bo Poole into a somewhat larger role. Maron is such a skillful storyteller that it feels like we've know Poole all along. I think the best parts of this story are how well she is integrating Dwight into the story, and the growth that Deborah has shown since the beginning of the series.

Judge Deborah Knott of Colleton County, North Carolina is settling in quite nicely to married life with Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant who has loved her for a long time. When Dwight's ex-wife dies, his eight year old son Cal comes to live them and they are in the process of becoming a family. Deborah and Dwight try not to discuss their work at home but sometimes that is not possible when she has information he needs. Body parts are found all around the county and nobody has a clue whose remains these are because nobody has filed a missing person's report. Flame Smith comes to town looking for her lover Buzz Harris who she intends to marry once his divorce is finalized. She can't find him so she goes to the sheriff; she identifies marks on the corpse that Buzz had. Finger prints prove he is the victim but nobody knows who could have hated him so much as to do such a horrific thing. The answers lies in a case Deborah heard in court but she is not yet aware of its significance. If she does and provide the information to her husband, with what he has they will be able to identify the killer?. Every Deborah Knott mystery is unique, original and entertaining with red herrings and unexpected twists to keep the reader guessing who the killer is. In HARD ROW, the audience get an inside look at the judge's personal life as Dwight plays a major role in the storyline. Fans can't help but adore him because he loves his wife and is thankful she loves him enough to marry him and be a mother to his son. Margaret Maron writes bloodless regional police procedurals that are always quite good Harriet Klausner

I'd seen Margaret Maron's name on several books but I'd never picked one up. I found out I've been missing a delightful writer. HARD ROW is the thirteenth novel of her long-running Judge Deborah Knott mysteries. Now that I've read this one, I want to go back and read the others, and probably will make time to do so. That's the best compliment I can pay a writer. That, and try to tell other people about the book. So let me tell you about this book. In HARD ROW, Deborah has just gotten married to Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant. They've moved in together, with Dwight's eight-year-old son, and are dealing with the fallout of trying to mesh their lives together, figure out the pecking order of Deborah as stepmother, and handling Cal's (the son) natural abandonment issues with his biological mother. She just picked up one day and sailed out of the picture to take care of herself. The book opens with a prologue set in January at a bar. Hispanic migrant workers gather there to drink and socialize after work. One of them gets into a fight with a white customer who's obviously spoiling for a physical encounter. This is just a little teaser that sets up the coming action. One of the things I've learned in this book is that Maron enjoys telescoping her plots and letting the reader catch glimpses of it along the way. By the first chapter, we're in court with Deborah as she deals with the fallout from the bar fight. The scenes told from Deborah's perspective throughout the book are always told in first-person. I enjoyed hearing her voice on the page and peeking in at her thoughts. Maron is a generous writer and leaves a lot of herself on the page. But she mixes up the first-person perspective with third-person when Dwight and the sheriff's office work their murder investigation. Deborah Knott is a down-to-earth woman who grew up in the back hills of North Carolina. Her roots show in her speech and in the way she thinks about things. Within just a few moments, I felt like I had gotten to know a new friend. The pages whizzed by with astonishing speed. The court stuff was interesting. Court cases and a chance to be voyeuristic on someone else's troubles appeal to a lot of readers. I enjoyed seeing the small town trouble and how Deborah dealt with it. I grew up in a small town myself, so a lot of the people she was writing about seemed very familiar to me. Chapter Two gives us a closer look at Deborah's home life and gives us an idea of her relationship and history with Dwight and her new stepson, Cal. A minor family emergency occurs when Dwight gets called in to work a murder and Deborah is plunged directly into her new role as stepmom to save Cal's evening. The boy is a big hockey fan, and he and his dad had had plans to go to a game. Deborah picks up the slack and discovers she has a love for hockey, finding yet a new way that her sudden family is going to be able to work out. As enjoyable as that all is, and given that the mystery smoothly moves i