Slow Dollar - Softcover

Maron, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446612979 ISBN 13: 9780446612975

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2003

Synopsis

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.

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Review

You can almost smell the cotton candy and hear the barkers inviting you to try your skill at a game of chance in this lively new mystery starring Colleton County, North Carolina, Judge Deborah Knott. Knott's stunned to discover that Brazos Hartley, murdered on the midway at the Harvest Festival carnival, was a member of her family; his mother, Tally Ames, is Deborah's first cousin, born of a shotgun marriage and abandoned as a child by her father, Deborah's brother. Naturally, when there's a second carnival murder, Deborah can't help getting involved in the investigation, even if it means uncovering secrets some of her relatives would just as soon keep confidential. The huge Knott clan, with Deborah at its center, gives Maron a wealth of material (the judge herself is one of 12 siblings!), which she makes the most of with wonderfully drawn characters and a beautifully evoked setting. The next best thing to a summer night at a country carnival, Slow Dollar is a standout in a series that just keeps getting better. --Jane Adams

About the Author

MARGARET MARON grew up in the country near Raleigh, North Carolina, but for many years lived in Brooklyn, New York. When she and her artist husband returned to the farm that had been in her family for a hundred years, she began a series based on her own background. The first book, Bootlegger's Daughter, became a Washington Post bestseller that swept the major mystery awards for its year-winning the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards for Best Novel-and is among the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Later Deborah Knott novels Up Jumps the Devil, Storm Track, and Three-Day Town each also won the Agatha Award for Best Novel. Margaret is also the author of the Sigrid Harald series of detective novels. In 2008, Maron received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the highest civilian honor the state bestows on its authors. And in 2013, the Mystery Writers of America celebrated Maron's contributions to the mystery genre by naming her a Grand Master-an honor first bestowed on Agatha Christie. To find out more about her, you can visit MargaretMaron.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0446612979
• ISBN 13: 9780446612975
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304