Customer Reviews

Winter's Child

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dwight Bryant, experienced sheriff and newbie husband, becomes alarmed when he realizes his son Cal was left alone. However, ex-wife Jonna has been a responsible parent up to now, and her absence seems due to foul play. Naturally, Dwight drops everything to investigate, while his staff keeps the home fires burning as they investigate the mysterious shooting of a man found dead in his truck.

This volume seems to be what I call a positioning novel in a larger series. Dana Stabenow and Lawrence Block made major shifts with gruesome novels that killed off characters who (I suspect) had gotten in the way. Maron, thankfully, offers a gentler version as she gives Dwight Bryant a larger place on the stage.

But readers who follow the series may want to keep Deborah Knott front and center. Deborah remains the most complex and interesting character in the series and indeed one of the most fascinating characters in the world of mystery fiction -- along with Holly Winter, Sharon McCone and Anna Pigeon. She's got city smarts and country sense. She attracts equally complex girlfriends and who wouldn't love her extended family?

An astute politician, she's more down-home and politically incorrect than other female series characters, with a Baptist affiliation and an open-minded approach to death penalty cases. Few of us agree 100% with our friends on every issue and that's what makes Deborah seem like someone I'd like to meet for coffee (or something stronger, as she would say).

Like most of Maron's novels, Winter's Child can be judged more by character and ambience than plot. The plot isn't bad. One murder just isn't that interesting or mysterious; the other was quite cleverly set up by the book's structure. We don't get to revisit characters and settings from previous volumes in the series and I for one miss scenes when Deborah's on the bench.

The resolution of the novel (predictable to veterans of mystery series) brings together characters who can create some interesting chemistry in future volumes. Maron's female characters can be expected to remain more interesting and 3-dimensional than the men. As for Dwight Bryant, I'm curious to see how Maron deals with his female deputy's unrequited (and so far unspoken) crush, which adds a nice piece of tension to scenes in the sheriff's office, where Deborah is forbidden to enter.

Deborah and Dwight are no sooner married than Dwight's past intrudes. In this entry in the Deborah Knott series, Margaret Maron gives Deborah a chance to explore Dwight's life during his first marriage.

Maron fills in much of the missing backstory about Dwight, and his oft mentioned, but never met ex-wife. While the trip to Shaysville is not nearly as satisfying as some of Deborah's previous departures from Colleton County, the story is still very interesting. It's good to see Maron explore what the relationship will be between Dwight, Deborah, and Cal. While I missed the rich local scenery and backstory that Maron usually manages to build when Deborah travels, I think she made a wise choice in focusing on family relationships. It gives us the promise of even richer novels to come.

All of the Judge Deborah Knott books are wonderful, so if this one is a bit less wonderful than average, small harm. Beginning a month after the action in Rituals of the Season (in which Deborah and the uneuphoniously named Dwight Bryant are wed), this novel is set mostly in Virginia, home of Dwight's son and ex-wife, Jonna. We can understand Maron's need to find additional settings for the series, lest Cotton Grove and environs become the Cabot Cove of the South, but I miss the NC atmosphere and ambience. In Shaysville, VA, however, Maron has created another Southern microcosm about which she can be lovingly caustic.

As with all of the novels in this series, the dialogue is word-perfect across class and gender lines. Listening to these people talk is a pure pleasure. The characters are vivid, never toppling over the bounds of credulity; we can enjoy despising the self-absorbed Southern lady and the obsessed collector of Civil War-era tat.

No, there's not much of a plot, but the shock value of Cal (Dwight's 8-year-old son) losing his mother and then being kidnapped is a fair substitute for one. The strength of Maron's series is that she creates a world in which we are delighted to dwell for a brief spell.

It's too brief, as always, but we can hope for more soon.

PS If anyone figures out the chapter headings, please do a post. Taken from the classics (Homer, Sophocles, various pre- and post-Socratic Greek philosophers, Ovid,) Shakespeare, Flaubert (?!?), Tennyson, and a 1918 book about weather (obviously, many are about the weather, re the title,) the tags presumably make sense to Maron, but I found them to be largely an exercise in the production of non-sequiturs - a distraction.

Although readable,Winter's Child lacks the strengths of Maron's earlier Deborah Knott novels. The previous books contained pointed but respectful and warm-hearted commentary on family relationships. In Winter's Child, this has dwindled to unconvincing jealousy on Deborah's part toward Dwight's former wife, who is herself simply a rather venomously caricatured ex-wife. The little boy, Cal, around whom much of the plot revolves, is not a convincing child, especially given his relative lack of reaction to the dire circumstances in which he is placed.

Missing as well is the trenchant commentary on the legal system which enlivened the previous novels. In this book, Judge Knott does not get to do any judging, and the absence of her internal musings about fairness and compassion makes her seem almost as vapid a character as the hapless ex-wife.

The plot has some interesting twists, but the relative absence of both convincing character development and rich setting makes it oddly unsatisfying.

I get where the other reviewers are coming from, but honestly, I enjoyed the story and the mystery. I thought introducing Deborah into Dwight's ex-wife's world was interesting and it gave us critical insight into Dwight and Deborah. I knew who the "bad guys" were throughout the novel, but I couldn't quite figure out what had happened until the last third, so I'd still recommend this book. Uncommon Clay remains my favorite in the series, but I think Winter's Child is worth a read, particularly if you are already familiar with Deborah and Dwight.

I am so surprised by the negative reviews that this book has received. It is too bad when fans of a series want every book be the same basic story. I think it's great when an author takes a chance and shakes up the basic plotline.

I hate to think that these negative reviews would discourage someone from reading this book. I really enjoyed this entry in the series (better than the last one) and was sorry when it was over. I thought the dialogue was very well written. The fabric of the characters lives has always been the reason why I love this series - not for intricate, shocking, solutions to the mysteries.

I think that someone who never read another entry in the series could pick this one up without a problem. If you like books with strong female characters and a strong sense of family with a Southern feel, this book and series are for you.

Judge Deborah Knott is newly married to Deputy Dwight Bryant when a local man is found shot to death on a lonely road. As Dwight becomes embroiled in the investigation, he receives a phone call from his son, Cal, asking him to come for a visit. Dwight drops everything and goes to Cal, only to find that Cal's mother is missing. Soon Cal goes missing too and the newlyweds put all of their efforts into finding him. This series is usually a very enjoyable one, but this particular book is a bit below Maron's usual standards. It starts out well, but loses steam as it goes along, and somehow the angst over Cal's disappearance is never communicated well to the reader. The plot about the murder is likewise not very compelling, and the reader is left with a somewhat flat feeling at the end. This book does serve to position the series for some situations in the future which will involve Cal and a female sheriff's deputy who has a crush on Dwight.

I enjoyed this book and author. I can't wait for a sequel. I would recommend this author to my friends.

First Sentence: "The call came through to the Colleton County Sheriff's Department just after sunset on a chilly Thursday evening in mid-January."

Judge Deborah Knott's new husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, has a murder to solve. Troublemaker J.D. Rouse has been fatally shot while driving his truck. But more important to Dwight is that his ex-wife is missing and, shortly thereafter, his son, Cal, as well.

I rather liked that this was more Dwight's story than Deborah's. It was a nice change. It is definitely the characters that make this story, and this series, work. There's always that feeling you've gone to visit a good friend and her entire family. That said, there were two plots to this story. The first, which was almost a secondary plot, seemed there to involve Deborah in the story and it was she who solved the case in the end. The second, involving Dwight and his son, was the more interesting, emotional and suspenseful story and the one that really kept me involved in the book. It may not have been a "wow" book, but it was a reliably good read. There's nothing wrong with that.

Great book. Real page turner. Keeps you hooked. One of Margaret Maron's best.