Home Fires [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Margaret Maron (Author), C.J. Critt (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1999

A Deborah Knott Mystery. When racial tension erupts in the sleepy community of Colleton County, North Carolina, Deborah is caught off guard. She is happily tending her own home fires: her simmering romance with Kidd Chapin, the house she's building on her family's land, and her campaign for reelection as a district judge. But then the first black church is burned, and all of Deborah's alarms go off.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Recorded Books; Unabridged edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0788732129
• ISBN-13: 978-0788732126
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,492,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A regional who-done-it beyond compare, November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Home Fires (Hardcover)

Judge Deborah Knott is seeing her lover when she receives the call from her brother Andrew that her nephew A.K. is in trouble with the law for desecrating gravestones at a nearby cemetery. A.K. and two of his buddies spray painted racial slurs on the graves of African-Americans.

Shortly after the arrest, a black church is burned with the graffiti being identical to that of the cemetery. The police believe the three teens did the act. Deborah, who is running for reelection in Colleton County, North Carolina, begins her own investigation. However, two more churches are torched and two corpses are found. If Deborah does not uncover the culprit soon, a race war may engulf her beloved hometown.

Award winning Margaret Maron returns with her sixth Knott regional who-done-it. HOME FIRES is a brilliant, in-depth portrayal of the modern south with its pressing social issues. The characters are well defined and though the mystery is relatively simplistic, the novel is another winner. This series and Ms. Maron's Sigrid Harald tales are all worth reading as they demonstrate just why the author is a multi-award winner.

Harriet Klausner

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like a visit with an old friend, April 27, 2000

By 

G. Caspary (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Fires (Deborah Knott Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Deborah Knott series is low-key, and the endings are correspondingly not shell-shockers. But in every book, Maron adds a little more information about Deborah and her family members, coworkers, and friends. I especially enjoyed reading about Cyl Degraffenreid, a character about who Maron has written in the past, but never to this extent. I hope we see her more in future books--she's complex, and as a reserved,none-too-social African American attorney, a nice foil to Deborah's warm, open character.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sure-fire way to please the mystery lover on your list!, December 2, 1999

By 

SF Dawn "SF Dawn" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Fires (Hardcover)

The Walters, long time owners of the now finacially troubled mill, are looking for a buyer. The community splits over the sale of the mill to a big-city investors. What will happen to the millworker's jobs if the sale goes through? But what if it doesn't? And what about the recent rash of peculiar fires? Is there a shady conntection between the fires and the mill buyout, or is something else fueling these mysterious blazes? In "Home Fires", Margaret Maron again delivers a vividly realistic, enticingly suspensful mystery. A sure-fire way to please the mystery book lover on your holiday list!