A dying woman's dangerous secrets

Designated Daughters, Margaret Maron

The publication of this, the 19th book in the Deborah Knott series of mysteries, caught me by surprise.  I've gotten so used to authors announcing their upcoming books, usually months in advance.  But the first I knew of this one was an email from the author on its release day last week.  I immediately made plans to stop for a copy on my way home from work - a prospect that made my day brighter right from the start.

This is a series I really enjoy.  It is set in North Carolina, in the farm country of the fictional Colleton County, where Deborah Knott is a district court judge married to a deputy sheriff, Dwight Bryant.  They are raising his son by a previous marriage, Cal, whom Deborah recently adopted.  Both of their families have roots deep in the area.  Deborah is the youngest of twelve children (and the only daughter).  Most of her brothers have settled around the family farm, raising their own families, as have some of their children in turn.  At the head of the family is the patriarch Kezzie Knott, once the most famous moonshiner in the county, if not the state.  He has supposedly retired, finally.  His son-in-law the deputy sheriff certainly doesn't want to know otherwise.

This story is set in the heart of the Knott family.  Kezzie's youngest sister Rachel is dying, lying silent and still in hospice care at the local hospital.  But one afternoon, she suddenly begins to speak again.  As the news spreads through the family, they gather at her bedside with longtime friends.  Rachel's words are clear, but they don't always make sense, as she moves back and forth in time, with threads of story switching from person to person.  Sometimes she speaks of her brother Jacob, who died more than sixty years ago in a swimming accident.  Jacob's twin Jedidiah was so distraught that he ran off to join the army, only to be killed himself in a training accident.  The twin tragedies have always weighed on the family, particularly their youngest sister.  Rachel also speaks in fragments of an abusive husband, a terrible flirt, someone who didn't pay his debts, and a father unknowingly raising another man's child.  She gives no names to these people, leaving the family to try and puzzle out their identities.

But her words have already threatened someone.  While the family is taking a break out of the room, Rachel is killed, suffocated with a pillow.  As Dwight and the police begin to investigate, they uncover the secrets behind Rachel's words.  They also learn that Jacob Knott's death in a creek all those years ago may not have been the accident everyone assumed.  While I have finally gotten Deborah's family sorted out (with the help of the family tree printed in the front of every book), I found all the secrets and the suspects a little hard to follow at times.  But the two cases are brought to neat and logical conclusions in the end, though the family may not feel that justice has been done.

There is a third element to this story, which is reflected in the title.  One of the cases that comes before Deborah's court is that of a brother suing a sister over their mother's estate.  The sister was the caregiver for the mother, while the brother now shows more interest in the estate than he ever did in his mother's care.  Through the case, Deborah meets a group that calls itself the "Designated Daughters."  Its members have become the caregivers for aging parents or ill siblings or even aunts and uncles, the ones who accept that responsibility for the rest of the family.  Some of the "Designated Daughters" are actually men, but the majority are women.  One of the members has been defrauded by the agent who handled an estate sale, and they want Deborah's help.  I know many people who are in the position of "Dedicated Daughters" (and sons).  My sisters took on that role with my mother; I was too far away in Texas to do more than visit and provide long-distance support.  Though the "Daughters" and through the Knotts, Margaret Maron explores the stresses on modern families, particularly with aging and illness, but also the fluid boundaries of what makes a family.  As Deborah notes of her son Cal, "Maybe not the child of my body, but damned if he's not the child of my heart." 

I always enjoy spending time with the Knotts, particularly Mr. Kezzie, and I sure wish Colleton weren't a fictional place.

Murder with buzzards

The Buzzard Table, Margaret Maron

This is the latest in Margaret Maron's mystery series set in North Carolina, which feature Deborah Knott, a district court judge married to a deputy sheriff.  She and her husband Dwight Bryant are often drawn into investigating crimes, though from different angles, since the cases rarely fall under Deborah's lower-court jurisdiction.

I always enjoy the mysteries, but what draws me to these stories are the wonderful characters and setting that Margaret Maron has created.  Most of the books are set in the fictional Colleton County.  Once a rural area, it is changing as family farms are dying off, the land sold to developers whose new homes bring in commuters from urban areas.  Deborah's father Kezzie Knott is holding on to his land, which he bought with the proceeds from a long career in bootlegging, from which he has supposedly retired.  Both the judge and the deputy hope that's true.  He in his turn is a little ambivalent about having a judge in the family, though he helped her win an appointment to the bench after she lost her first election (the means he used were unethical but very effective).  Deborah is the youngest of his twelve children, and the only daughter.  She is a great character, smart, inquisitive, loyal, with strong principles and  a good sense of humor - someone you can imagine sitting down with over a cup of coffee.  It's interesting, though, that she has stated in two or three of the books now that she isn't much of a reader.  That catches my attention each time, because it seems unusual; most of the characters I read about are themselves avid readers, including the detectives, from Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane to Corinna Chapman, and I can't off-hand remember another self-proclaimed non-reader.  I find myself thinking of books to to recommend to Deborah!

The first books in the series were almost completely from her point of view, so we got to know her pretty well.  The later books have alternated between her first-person narration and third-person narration, often following her husband Dwight and the members of his team, or sometimes other characters.  This shift gives the stories a wider scope, allowing us to see the crime or the investigation from different angles, and sometimes giving us access to information that not all of the characters have.  These include most of her older brothers, settled around the area on their own land with their children and grandchildren, as are other relatives from both sides of the family.  Each case usually involves some of the many family members (there is a helpful Knott family chart at the start of each book).  Deborah grew up with Dwight, a local boy who attended school with her brothers.  He enlisted in the army after graduation, working in military intelligence, before leaving the service and joining law enforcement.  They are raising his son Cal, who came to live with them after his mother (Dwight's first wife) was murdered.  (Fortunately they are encouraging Cal to read, and in this book Deborah is reading The Hobbit aloud to him.)  Dwight's own family also plays a big part in the later stories, particularly his mother Miss Emily, the principal of the local high school.

In the last book before this one, Three-Day Town, Dwight's sister-in-law Kate gave them a Christmas gift: the use of an apartment in New York City for a belated honeymoon.  One of Kate's Colleton relations asked them to deliver a small package to her daughter in New York, the contents of which led to a man's death.  Deborah and Dwight were drawn into the investigation, which was led by Lt. Sigrid Harald, the main character in an earlier series by Margaret Maron.  Though it is labeled "A Deborah Knott mystery," I felt like she and Dwight were more supporting characters, and I missed them in the story (I didn't really take to Sigrid).

In this book, the tables are turned.  Sigrid and her mother Anne have come to Colleton to visit Anne's mother, Mrs. Lattimore, who is losing her battle with cancer.  Also staying in the area is Mrs. Lattimore's English nephew Martin Crawford, a noted ornithologist working on a book about turkey buzzards.  When the body of a missing real estate agent turns up near the house where Crawford is staying, though, both Dwight and Sigrid start to wonder if the buzzards and their feeding table are a cover for something else.  Then a young high school student also goes missing.  He recently appeared in Deborah's court, accused of trespassing at the small county airstrip, where rumor has it the CIA routinely lands rendition flights to and from Guantanamo (Blackwater apparently got its start in North Carolina).  Could he be connected to the missing woman?  Sigrid rides along with Dwight on part of his investigations, learning about police work in a very different setting.

I very much enjoyed this return to Colleton.  Maron ingeniously winds the different layers of the story together to a complicated but satisfying conclusion.  The political elements make this story feel very topical, and while Maron makes her and Deborah's feelings about war and rendition clear, she is never strident.  I can't say I ever gave much thought to turkey buzzards, but I learned more than I expected from the chapter headings, "taken from the official website of The Turkey Vulture Society" (apparently the birds that we in North America call buzzards are actually vultures).  On a less gruesome topic, I enjoyed meeting the Lattimore/Harald family, as well spending time with the various Knotts and Bryants.  I do wish Deborah's father had played a bigger part in this book, because he's one of my favorite characters.  But we get to see the deepening relationship between Deborah and her stepson, which has had its rough moments.  If it wasn't for the Double Dog Dare, I might even be tempted to go back again to the earlier books in the series.

This book has a lovely dedication to "Barbara Mertz, who extended a generous hand to a ragtag bunch of unknowns,"  one of my favorite authors, who is herself probably better known as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels.

Murder on a honeymoon

Three-Day Town, Margaret Maron

This is the 17th book in Margaret Maron's series of mysteries featuring North Carolina judge Deborah Knott.  I was introduced to the books by my friend Margaret (not the author) while we were browsing in my beloved Murder by the Book one day.  She handed me the first, Bootlegger's Daughter, with those magical words: "You have to read this."  And she was right.  I wasn't even half-way through it before I was off looking for the rest of the series.

Most of it is set in North Carolina, in the fictional Colleton County where Deborah lives with her husband Dwight Bryant (a deputy sheriff) and his son, as well as their extended families.  Deborah has eleven brothers, who with their wives, ex-wives, and children play a large part in most of the books, as does her father Kezzie, who may or may have retired as a bootlegger (Dwight sure hopes he has, so he doesn't have to arrest his father-in-law one day).  Over the course of the series we've come to know them as well as other relations, colleagues and friends, in the complex and detailed world that Margaret Maron has created.  I wouldn't be surprised if literary tourists show up in North Carolina looking for Colleton the way they do in Louise Penny's Quebec.  I know I'd love to visit.

This book takes Deborah and Dwight out of that familiar setting, to New York City, for a belated honeymoon stay in an apartment owned by Dwight's sister-in-law Kate.  One of Kate's relations, the elderly Mrs. Lattimore, has asked them to deliver a small package to her daughter Anne Harald in New York.  When they arrive in New York, they discover that Anne is out of the country, but they make contact in turn with her daughter Sigrid, a lieutenant with the New York police.  Deborah arranges a meeting with Sigrid to deliver the package, which turns out to be a bronze art object.  She and Dwight are at a neighbor's party when Sigrid arrives, and when Deborah takes her back to their apartment to collect the item, they find the building's super dead in the living room and the bronze object missing.  At that point, Sigrid calls in her team and takes over the case.

The first few books in the series are all told in first-person narration, in Deborah's voice.  Ir's an appealing voice, frank and funny and honest, which draws you right into the story.  As Laurie R. King and Elizabeth Peters did with their first-person characters, though, Margaret Maron began alternating Deborah's chapters with third-person narration, often following Dwight and his team through their part of the mystery.  In this book, the alternate chapters follow Sigrid and her team.  She is the central character in a separate series of eight mysteries, none of which I have read.  There is clearly a lot of history between these characters, and I found it a challenge to keep them all straight.  I also missed Deborah and Dwight who, naturally sidelined from much of the investigation, spend their time playing tourists and honeymooners, though by the end of the case they play a big part in its resolution.  Up to that point, much of the investigation focuses on the residents and employees of the apartment building, and I found it a little difficult to keep track of all of them as well.

As usual, I had no idea who-done-it, but I enjoyed the story and the New York setting, which made me want to play tourist myself.  In the end, Dwight and Deborah cut short their honeymoon to return to Colleton County, and I'm looking forward to returning there again myself.