Home Fires [Hardcover]

Margaret Maron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1998 | Series: Deborah Knott Mysteries (Book 6)

At a stop along her campaign trail, Judge Deborah Knott attends a community picnic at the Mt. 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.The mass market edition of Killer Market (Mysterious Press 8/97) will be published simultaneously with Home Fires Burning.A Main Selection of The Mystery Guild.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If there's truly such a thing as an American "cozy," Margaret Maron's novels of the contemporary South fit the bill. Not that Deborah Knott, the sexy, smart young district court judge whose extended family of 10 siblings, a curmudgeonly father who used to be a moonshiner, and uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces too numerous to count, bears any resemblance to the maiden ladies of that beloved British genre. But like her English counterparts, Maron eschews blood and gore, and concentrates instead on manners, mores, and motives. And she has few equals on either side of the Atlantic; she weaves telling portraits of ordinary people coping with out-of-the-ordinary circumstances, often in less than a couple of sentences, and tells the whole history of a landscape and a way of life in one short paragraph. In this tradition, Home Fires delineates the remnants of prejudice that linger like an indelible stain on the fabric of race relations in mostly rural Colleton County, North Carolina. When Deborah's family calls on her to help her teenage nephew, who's accused of vandalizing a family cemetery with racial epithets and hate slogans, she butts heads with an angry, aggressive, black female D.A., a charismatic preacher, and an activist and former Black Panther whose closet full of skeletons seems linked to the church arsons. As the plot unfolds, Maron brings the New South into focus, illuminating not only its physical beauty and the complexity of its inhabitants but also the changes and problems caused by integration. Deborah is a steel magnolia whose own fires smolder sexily in scenes with Kidd, her lover, and whose own values and beliefs come in for a penetrating reexamination in this newest in the popular series from Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award-winning author Maron. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Maron's series featuring North Carolina Circuit Court Judge Deborah Knott got off to a great start when the launch novel, Bootlegger's Daughter (1992), swept the Edgar, the Macavity and the Anthony awards for best novel. The series is notable for the smooth way Maron blends the distinctively Southern charms of Deborah's vast extended family with engrossing plots and an intelligentAbut not heavy-handedAconsideration of social issues. In this sixth outing, Maron skillfully incorporates the changes and problems that integration has brought to the New South. Deborah, who narrates, is at the start of a reelection campaign when a nephew is arrested, with two friends, for desecrating a cemetery. When the same spraypainted graffiti appears at an African American church that's been torched, the young men are suspected of arson. Two more black churches are burned and two bodies uncovered before Deborah fingers the culprit. In a separate plotline, the fate of a young civil rights worker, missing for more than 20 years, is brought to light. Both solutions come a bit too easily, although the identity of the arsonist may surprise readers. Maron lays the groundwork with subtlety, however, and she brings much more depth to her portrait of small-town doings than do most mystery writers. Deborah, who dubs her competing inner voices "the preacher" and "the pragmatist," is a wholly engaging blend of country comfort and New South sophistication. Major ad/promo; Mystery Guild main selection. (Dec.) FYI: Mysterious will publish a mass market edition of the previous Deborah Knott mystery, Killer Market.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 243 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892966556
• ISBN-13: 978-0892966554
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,880 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!