Deborah Knott Mystery
14 primary works • 19 total works
Book 1
Deborah Knott, an attorney attempting to infiltrate the old boy network of tobacco country by running for district judge, is distracted from the race, and almost eliminated, when she finds new evidence to an old small-town murder.
Book 2
Book 3
Margaret Maron has garnered both the praise of critics and the raves of satisfied readers for her award-winning Deborah Knott series. The Indianapolis News notes that a Deborah Knott book is "more than just a mystery; it is a portrait of a place." The Houston Chronicle compares Maron's rich description of central North Carolina to the writings of Sarah Orne Jewett and Kate Chopin. And the Raleigh News & Observer gets it exactly right when it says that the series is "like pecan pie. It leaves you wanting more." Now, in Shooting at Loons, we follow Judge Deborah Knott to the state's lush Crystal Coast, where expensive yachts ride at anchor...and murders wash in on the "Down East" tide. Asked to sit in for a hospitalized judge in gracious old Beaufort, Deborah hopes to spend a restful week at her cousin's nearby Harkers Island cottage; but her very first clamming expedition turns up the corpse of a well-known fisherman in the shallow waters. Discovering the body puts her right in the middle of the fight between the locals who have long made their living from the sea and the new tide of well-to-do "dingbatters": weekenders and land developers who view the coast as their personal playground and gold mine. Deborah soon realizes that the centuries-old way of life in this isolated corner of the South is as endangered as loons and sea turtles, and the fisherman's murder is clearly tied to the coming changes. On the bench and off, she can feel the rage and fear and greed these changes arouse. Even so, sipping her bourbon in the fresh salt air proves beneficial for Deborah's soul, and life at the beach takes a definite upswing when she meets a game warden who's hunting for loon poachers. Not untila second murder occurs and a lover from her past becomes a suspect does Deborah realize she's up to her own neck in intrigue - and dangerously close to a killer...
Book 4
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. Opportunistsincluding one 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.
Book 5
A chilling misadventure begins when Deborah, hunting high and lowboy for lodging, is befriended by an eccentric old lady calling herself Mrs. Jernigan. Deborah follows the chiffon-clad Good Samaritan through rooms of French provincial and high-tech modern when the lady suddenly vanishes, leaving a sexy hunk of manhood dead and motionless on a pricey piece of "motion" furniture. Who is the mysterious Mrs. Jernigan and why is Deborah herself suspected of killing a furniture executive who specialized in making after-hours bedroom arrangements and cutthroat deals? To clear her name, Deborah has to table all other plans and investigate. But the knotty heart of this case is a secret well hidden behind a wall of silence about a woman's past. It will take all Deborah's courtroom experience and intuitive skills to strip through layers of deception to solve a whodunit that is strictly top-shelf...
Book 6
At a stop along her campaign trail, Judge Deborah Knott attends a community picnic at the Mr. Olive Church. When the historic building is destroyed by a fire shortly after the outing -- and the charred skeleton of a young man is found among the ashes -- Knott begins her own investigation into the tragedy. Earlier national news reports of a fire at a local African-American church had already gained the attention of Wallace Adderly, a Black Panther from the '70s. Knott and Adderly team up to discover if the blazes are merely coincidence, or the work of a racist arsonist. As the number of suspects rises, Deborah finds herself re-examining her own beliefs and values as she and Adderly race to prevent another devastating loss in the community.
Book 7
Lynn Bullock's used body is found in a local motel room. Her lawyer husband would never have imagined such an end for his wife, yet the people of Colleton County have always known her as a tramp. Judge Deborah Knott is drawn into the investigation when her good-looking cousin, Reid Stephenson, becomes a suspect.
Book 8
The dark earth in the piedmont of North Carolina's Randolph Country is heavy with bright clay. And it is of the same rich soil that attracts many of the South's most skilled potters. Also drawn to this region is the visiting judge Deborah Knott. She faces the most exasperating case a judge can handle: overseeing the equitable distribution of marital property after a bitter divorce. The Nordans - James Lucas and Sandra Kay - both potters, are divorcing after almost twenty-five years of marriage. As creative as it was stormy, the Nordans' history together produced great artistic achievements. Much of the credit for this stellar legacy goes to Amos Nordan, James Lucas's father and the proud clan patriarch. But Amos is not untouched by tragedy. Two years earlier an even more talented son Donny, apparently committed suicide in a manner so scandalous that Amos still cannot bear to speak of it. Suddenly, amid the petty bickering, an even more gruesome death strikes the Nordans, and the violence stalking the family homestead threatens to shut down the kilns for good.
Judge Knott must use all of her insight into the darkest entanglements of the human heart if she is to trap a determined murderer.
Judge Knott must use all of her insight into the darkest entanglements of the human heart if she is to trap a determined murderer.
Book 9
Opening night at the annual Harvest Festival carnival and the moonlit autumn evening has brought out half of Colleton Country to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl and Ferris wheel, throw quarters at Polly's Plate Pitch, or toss ping-pong balls into bowls of live goldfish against a cacophony of music, clacking machines and hucksterism. The air is sweetly redolent of hot grease, fried dough, grilled meats and spun sugar...and one whiff is all it takes to send Judge Deborah Knott straight back to her childhood, holding her mother's hand, riding on the shoulders of one of her eleven brothers or clinging to her father's trouser leg, dazzled by the bright neon tubes and colourful chasing lights. Unfortunately, all is not try-your-luck and stuffed prizes this year. Murder stalks the midway, and when one gaffed game ends with a brutal death, Deborah discovers more than a body. For hidden beneath the carnival's razzle-dazzle surface is a sordid reality of danger, greed and dark secrets - devastating confidences kept concealed for almost twenty years. Now as family loyalties war with judicial obligations, Deborah must struggle to win a carny's trust...before the killer pins a bull's eye on yet another victim.
Book 13
"As Judge Deborah Knott presides over a case involving a barroom brawl, it become clear that deep resentments over race, class, and illegal immigration are summering just below the surface inColleton County." - Back cover
Book 17
While in New York, Judge Deborah Knott has been asked to deliver a package to Lt. Sigrid Harald of the NYPD. Sigrid offers to swing by the apartment with her husband to pick up the box, but when they reach the apartment, they discover that the box is missing and the doorman has been murdered.
Book 18
Book 19
When Deborah Knott's terminally ill aunt, Rachel, is found smothered to death in her bed at a hospice center, all of her Colleton County kith and kin are shocked. Who kills a dying woman? As Deborah and her husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, try to find Rachel's killer, they cross paths with the Designated Daughters, a support group for caregivers, not all of whom are women. Rachel's flamboyant daughter, Sally, is a member, and when a con artist cheats one of the group, they swing into action. They want more than just a shoulder to cry on-they want revenge.
Book 20
"On a quiet August morning, Judge Deborah Knott's father Kezzie makes a shocking discovery on a remote corner of his farm: the body of a man bludgeoned to death. Investigating this crime, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, soon uncovers a long-simmering hostility between Kezzie and the slain man over a land dispute. The local newspaper implies that Deborah's family may have had something to do with the murder-and that Dwight is dragging his feet on the case. Meanwhile, Deborah is given a cigarette lighter that once belonged to her mother. The cryptic inscription inside rekindles Deborah's curiosity about her parents' past, and how they met. For years she has wondered how the daughter of a wealthy attorney could have married a widowed, semi-illiterate bootlegger, and this time she's determined to find the answer. But why are Deborah's brothers so reluctant to talk about the dead man? Is the murder linked to Kezzie's illegal whiskey business? And could his courtship of Deborah's mother have something to do with the bad blood between the two families? Despite Deborah's promise not to interfere in Dwight's work, she cannot stop herself from doing everything she can to help clear her brothers and her father from suspicion. "--
Taking an out-of-town assignment to put distance between herself and her hyper-reactive family, recently engaged judge Deborah Knott finds her peaceful break disrupted by a local murder that she becomes determined to solve.
Judge Deborah Knott has a severe case of anxiety in the final days before her wedding to Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant. However, when a friend and colleague is shot on the icy drive home and Dwight becomes the lead detective on the case, Deborah is immediately involved. Issues of ethics and confidentiality suddenly face her...right on the next pillow. Renovations to the house where the newlyweds will live are shockingly behind schedule, Deborah's maid of honour is so heavily pregnant she may deliver during the ceremony and, somehow, Deborah must find a way to connect with her wary soon-to-be-stepson. Now she is in danger of losing sight of what really matters. But just when Deborah thinks she's finally got order in her court and her life, fate has one more surprise in store...
"It's Christmas in rural North Carolina's Colleton County. Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant and his wife, Judge Deborah Knott, have propped his traditional pine tree in the living room. Christmas lights have been hung. Aunt Zell's famous fruitcake has arrived. Deborah can't wait to celebrate with Dwight, her stepson Cal, and all of her colorful relatives. Then a tragic car wreck casts a dark cloud over the revelry. A beautiful young cheerleader dies in the crash, and her community is devastated. But Dwight soon learns that the girl's death wasn't a simple accident. And more lives may be lost before Christmas Eve unless Deborah and Dwight find the killer - or killers"--Page 2 of cover.
Conflicts between family farmers and real estate developers in Colleton County lead to the murder of a controversial commissioner and pulls Judge Deborah Knott and her husband, sheriff's deputy Dwight Bryant, into the fray.
