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 landDallas'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.)
Best-selling author Margaret Maron's colorful Deborah Knott mysteries crackle with sassy Southern dialogue and rural wisdom. In Up Jumps the Devil, fast-moving progress is threatening to forever destroy the leisurely, heart-warming pace of Colleton County, North Carolina. District court judge Deborah Knott sees trouble brewing when plans for a new interstate highway start pushing up property values. As her own relatives battle lifelong neighbors over selling farmland or holding out, Deborah finds herself calming the combatants with down-home wit-and sometimes, judicial decisions. But when the squabbles escalate to murder, Deborah is forced to search for the killer uncomfortably close to home. Margaret Maron skillfully draws on her North Carolina roots to pen her well-crafted, suspenseful mysteries. Her creative talents have earned her the coveted Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Awards. Salt-of-the-earth characters, vivid with lilting, down-home humor and unwavering opinions, step from the pages when narrator C.J. Critt breathes life into them.
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Up Jumps the Devil
Best-selling author Margaret Maron's colorful Deborah Knott mysteries crackle with sassy Southern dialogue and rural wisdom. In Up Jumps the Devil, fast-moving progress is threatening to forever destroy the leisurely, heart-warming pace of Colleton County, North Carolina. District court judge Deborah Knott sees trouble brewing when plans for a new interstate highway start pushing up property values. As her own relatives battle lifelong neighbors over selling farmland or holding out, Deborah finds herself calming the combatants with down-home wit-and sometimes, judicial decisions. But when the squabbles escalate to murder, Deborah is forced to search for the killer uncomfortably close to home. Margaret Maron skillfully draws on her North Carolina roots to pen her well-crafted, suspenseful mysteries. Her creative talents have earned her the coveted Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Awards. Salt-of-the-earth characters, vivid with lilting, down-home humor and unwavering opinions, step from the pages when narrator C.J. Critt breathes life into them.
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940171312398 |
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Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
Publication date: | 03/11/2008 |
Series: | Deborah Knott Series , #4 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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