Up Jumps the Devil: a Deborah Knott mystery (4) - Softcover

Maron, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997457554 ISBN 13: 9780997457551

Publisher: Oconee Spirit Press LLC, 2017

Synopsis

After Margaret Maron's first Deborah Knott novel, Bootlegger's Daughter, ran away with the top mystery awards in 1993, this highly acclaimed series has continued to whet our appetite for superb fiction in which the setting is, as the Houston Chronicle noted, "so rich in detail and description of the New South that you can almost hear the North Carolina twang and taste the barbecue." Now, in her fourth outing, Deborah Knott is again in the driver's seat, roaring down dirt roads and checking out crime scenes until...

UP JUMPS THE DEVIL.

Murder usually begins at home, and Colleton County, North Carolina, proves no exception. When truck driver and childhood neighbor Dallas Stancil is shot and killed in his own backyard, Judge Deborah Knott figures she owes his memory at least the respectful ritual of taking his widow one of her Aunt Zell's best chicken casseroles.

Mistake Number One.

Dallas wasn't rich, but with development eating up the farms and forests of North Carolina his land is suddenly worth a fortune. His trashy, chain-smoking third wife and grown stepchildren are all too aware of its value. Opportunists--including one of Deborah's own brothers--are coming out of the woodwork. And she knows big money makes people do bad things.

Hardworking, redneck, and salt-of-the-earth, the Stancil men have lived side-by-side with Deborah's family. When the Stancils suffer another tragedy, a long-hidden skeleton rattles its bones and jumps out of what she thought was her long-dead past. She can run the culprit back out of town or maybe get him charged with murder, but ignoring him would be Mistake Number Two.

All around the changing South, Deborah sees hunting dogs, rowdy funerals, backwoods moonshine stills, and long-bed pickups clashing with BMW-driving professionals and housing tracts. With one foot in the rural past and the other in today's high-tech present, she knows her personal world is changing too. This bootlegger's daughter sits on the judicial bench and sees both sides of the law. But she also feels the tug of her roots...and the pull of her heart.

About this title

Review

The three best things about Margaret Maron's series of mysteries starring Judge Deborah Knott are the setting (a small North Carolina town threatened by prosperity), the plots (lots of big and little stories that usually got all twisted together), and Judge Knott herself -- a realistic blend of toughness and compassion. In her new outing, Maron brings the action very close to home: a handsome drifter who was briefly Deborah's husband during her flaming youth is the chief suspect in a murder, and the land which her father amassed from his profits as a bootlegger is in danger of being sold for tract housing. (To catch up with previous Knott adventures, try Bootlegger's Daughter and Shooting at Loons.

About the Author

MARGARET MARON grew up on a farm near Raleigh, North Carolina, but for many years lived in Brooklyn, New York. When she returned to her North Carolina roots with her artist-husband, Joe, she began a series based on her own background. The first book, Bootlegger's Daughter, became a Washington Post best-seller that swept the major mystery awards for its year 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 won the Agatha Award for Best Novel. In 2008, Maron received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the state's highest civilian honor. 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. In 2016, she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. To find out more about the author, you can visit MargaretMaron.com. Ebooks are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oconee Spirit Press LLC
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0997457554
• ISBN 13: 9780997457551
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 194