Slow Dollar (Deborah Knott Series #9)

by Margaret Maron

Overview

The multiple winner of the most coveted prizes for mystery fiction, including the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Awards, Margaret Maron has received immense acclaim for her highly popular Deborah Knott series. She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Malice Domestic and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Now, in Slow Dollar, her ninth novel featuring the tough and quick-witted North Carolina judge, a ragtag carnival comes to Colleton County�with murder as the main attraction.

Opening night at the annual Harvest Festival carnival and the moonlit autumn evening has brought out half of Colleton County to ride the Tilt-O-Whirl and Ferris wheel, throw quarters at Polly�s Plate Pitch, or toss ping-pong balls into bowls of live goldfish against a cacophony of music, clacking machines, and hucksterism. The air is sweetly redolent of hot grease, fried dough, grilled meats, and spun sugar�and one whiff is all it takes to send Judge Deborah Knott straight back to her childhood, holding her mother�s hand, riding on the shoulders of one of her eleven brothers, or clinging to her daddy�s pants leg, dazzled by the bright neon tubes and colorful chasing lights.

Unfortunately, all is not try-your-luck and stuffed prizes this year. Murder stalks the midway, and when one gaffed game ends with a brutal death, Deborah discovers more than a body.

For hidden beneath the carnival�s razzle-dazzle surface is a sordid reality of danger, greed, and dark secrets�devastating confidences that Deborah has kept concealed for almost twenty years. Now as family loyalties war with judicial obligations, Deborah must struggle to win a carny�s trust�before the killer pins a bull�s-eye on yet another victim.

(Cover art by Blue Moon Graphics)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940149615667
Publisher:	Maron & Company
Publication date:	05/26/2014
Series:	Deborah Knott Series , #9
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	170,777
File size:	290 KB

About the Author

Born and bred in North Carolina where the piedmont meets the sandhills, I grew up on a modest two-mule tobacco farm that has been in the family for over a hundred years. Tobacco is no longer grown on the farm, but the memories linger � the singing, the laughter, the gossip that went on at the bench as those rank green leaves came from the field, the bliss of an icy cold drink bottle pressed to a hot sweaty face, getting up at dawn to help �take out� a barn, the sweet smell of soft golden leaves as they�re being readied for auction. Working in tobacco is one of those life experiences I�m glad to have had. I�m even gladder that it�s something I�ll never have to do again.

After high school came two years of college before a summer job at the Pentagon led to marriage, a tour of duty in Italy, then several years in my husband�s native Brooklyn. I had always loved writing and for the first few years, wrote nothing but short stories and very bad poetry. (The legendary Ruth Cavin of St. Martin�s Press once said of the silly verses I write to celebrate various friends �It's doggerel, Margaret. But inspired doggerel.� I was immensely flattered.)

Eventually, I backed into writing novels about NYPD Lt. Sigrid Harald, mysteries set against the New York City art world. Living there let me see how the city is a collection of villages, each with its own vitality and distinct ambiance, vibrant and ever-changing. But once I had settled back into North Carolina, love of my native state and a desire to write out of current experiences led to the creation of District Court Judge Deborah Knott, the opinionated daughter of a crusty old ex-bootlegger and youngest sibling of eleven older brothers. (I was one of only three, so no, I�m not writing about my own family.)

We�ve been back on a corner of the family land for many years now. My city-born husband discovered he prefers goldfinches, rabbits, and the occasional quiet deer to yellow cabs, concrete, and a city that never sleeps. A son, a daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters are icing on our cake.

Why mysteries? Quite honestly, when I first chose this genre, it was because I thought I had nothing to say and the classic mystery novel had a form that would let me write without any burden of trying to be profound. All I had to do was entertain. But once I began writing about North Carolina, I realized that there was nothing I couldn�t say in this most flexible form.