Customer Reviews

Hard Row

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Judge Deborah Knott of Colleton County, North Carolina is settling in quite nicely to married life with Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant who has loved her for a long time. When Dwight's ex-wife dies, his eight year old son Cal comes to live them and they are in the process of becoming a family. Deborah and Dwight try not to discuss their work at home but sometimes that is not possible when she has information he needs.

Body parts are found all around the county and nobody has a clue whose remains these are because nobody has filed a missing person's report. Flame Smith comes to town looking for her lover Buzz Harris who she intends to marry once his divorce is finalized. She can't find him so she goes to the sheriff; she identifies marks on the corpse that Buzz had. Finger prints prove he is the victim but nobody knows who could have hated him so much as to do such a horrific thing. The answers lies in a case Deborah heard in court but she is not yet aware of its significance. If she does and provide the information to her husband, with what he has they will be able to identify the killer?.

Every Deborah Knott mystery is unique, original and entertaining with red herrings and unexpected twists to keep the reader guessing who the killer is. In HARD ROW, the audience get an inside look at the judge's personal life as Dwight plays a major role in the storyline. Fans can't help but adore him because he loves his wife and is thankful she loves him enough to marry him and be a mother to his son. Margaret Maron writes bloodless regional police procedurals that are always quite good

Harriet Klausner

to a new family life for Judge Deborah Knott Bryant, Margaret Maron returns her to the bench and the familiarity of Colleton County, NC for last year's "Hard Row". As is the case with most of Maron's writings, we get some no nonsense "judgeship" from Deborah, mixed with family happenings and societal pressures in rural NC.

In this tale, we are enlightened by the discovery that it is not only the border states that cope with the reliance on illegal immigrant labor, only to subject the workers to callousness, indifference and bigotry in the "land of opportunity". But this isn't a political tome, just a sensible use of the current state as a backdrop for a horrendous series of crimes that Judge Deborah's new husband Dwight has to investigate.

Mix in a little family dynamic of Deborah and Dwight getting used to having Dwight's son, Cal, live with them and try to recover from his mom's death.. and you have "Hard Row", a welcome 13th edition to Maron's down home series set in North Carolina.

A good read, but you'll enjoy it far more if you've read the other books in the series.

I'd seen Margaret Maron's name on several books but I'd never picked one up. I found out I've been missing a delightful writer. HARD ROW is the thirteenth novel of her long-running Judge Deborah Knott mysteries. Now that I've read this one, I want to go back and read the others, and probably will make time to do so. That's the best compliment I can pay a writer.

That, and try to tell other people about the book.

So let me tell you about this book. In HARD ROW, Deborah has just gotten married to Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant. They've moved in together, with Dwight's eight-year-old son, and are dealing with the fallout of trying to mesh their lives together, figure out the pecking order of Deborah as stepmother, and handling Cal's (the son) natural abandonment issues with his biological mother. She just picked up one day and sailed out of the picture to take care of herself.

The book opens with a prologue set in January at a bar. Hispanic migrant workers gather there to drink and socialize after work. One of them gets into a fight with a white customer who's obviously spoiling for a physical encounter. This is just a little teaser that sets up the coming action. One of the things I've learned in this book is that Maron enjoys telescoping her plots and letting the reader catch glimpses of it along the way.

By the first chapter, we're in court with Deborah as she deals with the fallout from the bar fight. The scenes told from Deborah's perspective throughout the book are always told in first-person. I enjoyed hearing her voice on the page and peeking in at her thoughts. Maron is a generous writer and leaves a lot of herself on the page. But she mixes up the first-person perspective with third-person when Dwight and the sheriff's office work their murder investigation.

Deborah Knott is a down-to-earth woman who grew up in the back hills of North Carolina. Her roots show in her speech and in the way she thinks about things. Within just a few moments, I felt like I had gotten to know a new friend. The pages whizzed by with astonishing speed.

The court stuff was interesting. Court cases and a chance to be voyeuristic on someone else's troubles appeal to a lot of readers. I enjoyed seeing the small town trouble and how Deborah dealt with it. I grew up in a small town myself, so a lot of the people she was writing about seemed very familiar to me.

Chapter Two gives us a closer look at Deborah's home life and gives us an idea of her relationship and history with Dwight and her new stepson, Cal. A minor family emergency occurs when Dwight gets called in to work a murder and Deborah is plunged directly into her new role as stepmom to save Cal's evening. The boy is a big hockey fan, and he and his dad had had plans to go to a game. Deborah picks up the slack and discovers she has a love for hockey, finding yet a new way that her sudden family is going to be able to work out.

As enjoyable as that all is, and given that the mystery smoothly moves into first gear, I was totally blown away by the events in Chapter Five. As it is in a lot of small towns, Deborah's family owns land that they also farm. Over the years the land has been divided up between several families, which forces them to agree on how to work the land together in order to leverage the most profit. Discussion on which crops to grow, and the potential problems that may grow out of the growing, were intriguing. I grew up around a lot of that myself, but I've lived in the larger cities so long that I haven't thought much of it. I enjoyed getting back to my roots by listening to Deborah and her family discuss these problems that loom so large in the lives of small towns.

The biggest part of Maron's magic is that small community feeling that's on every page of her novel. Readers will feel as though they know these people in this town within just a few short chapters. Not only that, but they'll learn the legal system and the personnel involved with it as well. The vernacular and setting reminded me a lot of author Bill Crider's Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries set in Texas.

In the beginning it seems as though Deborah and Dwight are working two separate cases. Deborah is trying to locate a husband in a divorce court proceeding while Dwight and the sheriff's office are picking up pieces of a murdered man spread around the county. Of course, readers will probably guess that the two cases are connected (even though the body parts no longer are!) and that the two investigations ultimately lead them to the same place.

But it's the journey Deborah, Dwight, and the reader take to get there, and the things that happen at home and between family members, that make this a real page-turner. You just can't get enough of the family problems and issues that are ladled throughout the murder mystery. Maron provides a delicious concoction of puzzle and gossip that is guaranteed to keep readers up past bedtime.

Another outstanding entry for the Judge Deobrah Knott series by Margaret Maron. As a long time fan of both her Deborah Knott and Sigrid Harald series I always look forward to a new book with anticipation of a great read and I wasn't disappointed. Ms Maron has a true understandig of a small town life that is rapidly disappearing as such communities grow and expand under outside pressures. At the same time she explores the domestic interactions of a large and loving family as it struggles with the same type of growth and expansion. As always her mystery storyline is well integrated into the personal story of Deborah Knott and her family. This is a great addition to the series.

In long series, the characters often develop more intense personal lives as the books roll out. In this series, I am fascinated that not just Deb'rah changes and becomes deeper, but so does Colleton County, the rural North Carolina setting of the books. Urbanization, gentrification, corporate farming, immigration, race relations...they're fun whodunits, but also a little slice of sociological observation.

All's well in the Deborah Knott series, to me, when Deborah is sitting on the bench as judge deciding cases. Hard Row is well endowed with such scenes. If you are a fan of the series, you would be foolish to skip this one: It's a gem. But I've noticed that some published reviews by prominent sources contain spoilers about this book. Be careful what you read in advance or you may lose some of the fun of this rewarding mystery.

The better mystery series with women as the detectives find a way to combine a look at family life with the cases at hand. Margaret Maron is particularly adept in Hard Row in developing that family element as Deborah and Dwight Bryant get used to married life with Dwight's son Cal who is eight. There is also a sequence of fun scenes involving Deborah's family trying to figure out what crops to grow now that tobacco isn't very profitable any more. As usual, I was grateful for the reminder facing page one about who all of Deborah's relatives are.

Ms. Maron also does a fine job with exploring the challenges that face modern farmers as they balance their natural desire to earn a profit with the important need to be a decent person. You'll find out about the role that prejudice can play in this regard as well.

As the book opens, someone is strewing body parts all over the county. Dwight keeps getting called out to investigate the next one. Will they ever find a whole corpse? Deborah is also troubled by defendants and litigants who don't seem to understand what they are supposed to do in the legal process.

You would think that a married couple would share enough pillow talk to make solving mysteries pretty easy, but that's not the case for this pair as ethical considerations often require keeping knowledge separate from one another. But Ms. Maron is a genius at developing plot complications that allow the correct information to get into the right hands.

The book is also filled with good humor, always kicked off by the friendly advice quoted in each chapter's opening from Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890. By using quite a few different narrators, you also are able to enjoy many perspectives on various characters and their actions, such as Reid's habits when it comes to umbrellas.

This is a very fine book. It would work well as a standalone if you haven't read any books in the series before. But I do recommend that you start in the beginning, rather than here. You have a treat ahead of you if you do.

After a departure from Colleton County in Winter's Child, Judge Deborah Knott is back on the bench. This is a comfortable return to the series, with Deborah and Dwight adjusting to having Cal live with them full-time.

The book is a well-balanced tale with equal parts focusing on the adjustment the family must make, the crime itself, and the investigations (both on Deborah's part and Dwight's part). As is always welcome, Deborah's large family makes an appearance, which although not critical, is entertaining. I also think it lets Maron offer some commentary on the changes that Colleton County is undergoing.

Maron hits all the right notes in this latest offering, and adds a few new ones. One of those new notes is the introduction of Sheriff Bo Poole into a somewhat larger role. Maron is such a skillful storyteller that it feels like we've know Poole all along. I think the best parts of this story are how well she is integrating Dwight into the story, and the growth that Deborah has shown since the beginning of the series.

This is another in the series of the Judge Deborah Knott stories by author Margaret Maron. In this story, Deborah and her new husband, Dwight Bryant are getting adjusted to married life as well as having gotten custody of Dwight's son Cal. His mother was killed in an accident, so not only is Deborah a new wife, she is a new stepmother to a confused and lonely little boy.

With your dad the primary detective running down killers and keeping the peace, and your stepmother a Judge who does not always keep courthouse hours, Cal is left to make friends with the many cousins, aunts, uncles and step relatives in this close knit family setting.

Along with all the usual turmoil associated with a large active family, there are the dismembered body parts showing up all over the county. Dwight and his deputies are kept busy sorting through the various crime scenes and trying to identify the body.

Once the body is identified, then comes the motive and trying to figure out who did such a gruesome thing to this unlikable but very wealthy man. We have plenty of suspects: the estranged wife, the girlfriend, the migrant workers who he treated cruelly, the managers and employees who worked for him, but did not really like him.

Each suspect has to be eliminated and interviewed, along with adjusting to married life and full-time parenthood.

But Judge Knott and hubby Dwight are up for the challenge, they are both professionals in their fields and do their best to uphold the law and bring the criminals to justice.

Along with this story line is an underlying message about the treatment of migrant workers and the issues of illegal vs. legal status for workers. At times it seems Maron is on a soapbox.

I always enjoy the Deborah Knott series, and wonder in amazement how Maron keeps her characters straight from one book to another. I imagine she has one wall in her writing space dedicated to nothing but the family tree of the Knotts and Bryants.

Hard Row is the thirteenth in the Deborah Knott series from award-winning author Margaret Maron.

Judge Knott and her new husband Sheriff Dwight Bryant are adjusting to married life, and being fulltime parents to Dwight's 8-year-old son Cal, after the death of his mother.

Buck Harris, a local vegetable farmer who has become a success through hard work, is dumping his wife and hanging out with a younger woman--a gold digger. He does not show up in Judge Knott's court in a hearing on the settlement of his property in his divorce (not a new occurrence).

He also turns out to be connected to the assorted body parts that keep turning up along the ditches of Colleton County, North Carolina. Once the body is identified, there seem to be no paucity of suspects. His treatment of his "guest workers" has earned him fines in the past, and his soon-to-be ex-wife still is trying to keep their working and living conditions acceptable. He had many lovers and some of them had angry husbands. His wife was angry and disgusted with his behavior in many areas of his life. The many inter-connections in that exist in small towns help solve this case.

Maron's books are always great reading. Her love of North Carolina and the agrarian lifestyle shines through her books. The many changes in selling and marketing, deciding what to grow, working crops, all the fascinating details are part of this story.

Armchair Interviews says: A mystery with lots of added interesting information about raising crops.

Margaret Maron's "Hard Row" opens with a chart outlining the family tree of District Court Judge Deborah Knotts. Deborah is the youngest of twelve children and the only female; her family is so extensive that it is hopeless to keep track of everyone's name. It is easier and more productive to focus on Deborah's loving husband, Major Dwight Bryant of the Colleton County Sheriff's Department, and her eight-year-old stepson, Cal, who is still grieving over the recent loss of his mother, Jonna. Deborah is walking on eggshells with Cal for the time being, since the boy has had to cope with a great deal of trauma at a very young age.

Deborah's busy courtroom is a lively place. On a given day, she hears a wide variety of cases, ranging from wife beating to reckless driving. She also helps in the equitable division of marital assets for divorcing couples. Meanwhile, Deborah's husband is struggling with an extremely grisly case; the body parts of an unidentified male have been found in different locations around the area. Although no one knows the name of the deceased as yet, it is clear that he was mercilessly tortured and hacked to death in a blind rage.

As is often the case with stories that take place in a rural locale, all is not placid beneath the bucolic façade. Hanon explores the ugly racial bias that many Caucasians feel towards the Mexican migrant workers who pick their crops and care for their homes. Marriages crumble as spouses try to cope with money problems, infidelity, alcoholism, and domestic abuse. The author also points out the special problems that beset farmers whose way of life is endangered by America's changing economic circumstances and demographics.

The tone of the book shifts frequently. Passages of light banter, gentle humor, and loving family conversations are followed by scenes of sickening cruelty and shocking violence. Deborah and Dwight each do their share to solve the novel's gruesome mystery, but this aspect of the plot fails to generate much excitement or suspense. The real value of "Hard Row" lies in Hanon's meticulous depiction of a particular time and place in North Carolina where a family's roots run deep and people tend to look out for one another. For the unlucky few, however, life is not as pleasant. Members of the underclass struggle to eke out a living under unhealthful conditions, with little to look forward to but backbreaking labor and an endless struggle to be accepted by an often prejudiced society.