A Deborah Knott Mystery

Judge Deborah Knott boasts a very colorful, rural North Carolina district, from her extended clan to her courtroom, and takes on confounding murders and difficult people.

Confident and strong, Deborah Knott of Colleton County practices what she preaches as a fair and color-blind district judge. If only her Daddy, an infamous North Carolina bootlegger, and a mess of kin and other troubling folks would just let her do her job. These gripping legal mysteries interweave vivid regional references and topical issues - unscrupulous land developers, the use of dangerous pesticides, the exploitation of illegal immigrants, and racism among them - with riveting cases of kidnapping, rape, and murder.

C. J. Critt’s lively delivery nabs Judge Knott - and her bossy Daddy. A native Texan, Critt captures every character in the sprawling cast with spot-on Southern accents; she especially shines at portraying Knott’s bootlegger Daddy in all of his crotchety concern for his family.

Born and raised in North Carolina, author Margaret Maron won the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards for best mystery novel for Bootlegger’s Daughter, the debut of her Deborah Knott series.