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Winner of the Agatha Award for Best Novel Published in the Year 2000
The Barnes & Noble Review
I've been reading a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald lately, notably Tender is the Night and a number of the so-called "slick" stories he wrote. The first thing that surprised me was how many of his stories brush up against the crime genre. In his notebooks he talks about how criminals are a part of all society -- Balzac said pretty much the same thing -- and yet people are always surprised when they come up against evidence of crime in their own lives.
Margaret Maron explores this theme in her excellent new novel, Storm Track. Lillian Bullock, a woman most townspeople of Colleton County, North Carolina, thought of as loose, is found dead in a motel. And from that room the ripples and eddies of suspicion spread far and wide. Her death forces an entire town to come up against evidence of crime in their own lives.
Judge Deborah Knott finds herself looking at her town and her friends in a chilling new light. The homicide touches a number of lives close to hers, even including her kin. She has suspicions she doesn't want to have and begins to perceive certain people in ways she fights against. Maron dramatically contrasts the emotional storm with Hurricane Fran, a fury of biblical wrath about to be visited upon Colleton County. Her hurricane details give a reportorial tone that contrasts nicely with the nimble grace of her human portraiture and storytelling. She also has Fitzgerald's (and Chandler's) knack of taking a scene you've read numerous times and doing something new with it -- giving it a new spin or adding a moment of humor or melancholy. For me this is the mark of a first-rate writer: making all the conventions of a genre seem uniquely your own.
Margaret Maron is quietly becoming one of the true masters of contemporary mystery fiction. Her elegantly underplayed Storm Track should win her a whole lot of new fans. (Ed Gorman)
Ann Prichard
The plucky, Nancy Drew-like heroine, down-home setting and racy plot line combine to make it a very tasty whodunit.
— USA Today
Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction
In this seventh book in the Deborah Knott mystery series, Judge Knott is drawn into an investigation of a local murder, and suspicion turns to a member of her own family, disclosing a secret romance and much more. A few reviewers found it "imaginative, entertaining and thrilling." Most countered with "forced and stilted, the storm was the most interesting part of the book." "It moves at the pace of a hurricane - slowly, inexorably, and ominously toward a foregone conclusion."
Toby Bromberg
Storm Track is human drama of the highest sort, guaranteed to keep you riveted. Maron does a masteful job of plotting her mystery against the growing storm, keeping the tension running at high octane. Long time fans will be expecially pleased as Maron further explores the entwined family of Deborah Knott.
— Romanic Times
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Judge Deborah Knott of the Colleton County (N.C.) District Court is one of the most delightful and original of contemporary amateur detectives. The youngest of 12 children--and the only girl--she knows everyone in the county and is never shy about poking her nose in all manner of suspicious happenings. Then she sits readers down for a cosy chat about her adventures, as though they were old friends. In the series's seventh novel (Homes Fires), when promiscuous Lynn Bullock is found strangled in the Orchid Motel wearing black lace underwear, suspects include several local men as well as the deceased's attorney husband, Jason, and Deborah's womanizing cousin Reid Stephenson. But Deborah saw all of these men playing softball at the time of the murder. The judge helps investigate the crime, but soon she has to confront another killer--ferocious Hurricane Fran, fast approaching from the coast. Maron immerses the reader in the down-home, inbred world of the rural South, where intertwined family histories are common knowledge and some old-timers, like Deborah's unrepentant bootlegger father, still live by obsolete customs. Colleton County also has a growing population of black and female professionals, as well as spreading residential development to accommodate suburbanites from the coastal cities 150 miles away. One of Maron's many skills is her ability to weave into her story the social changes coming to this region with the speed of that hurricane. Agent, Vicky Bijur. Mystery Guild main selection. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Library Journal
When someone snuffs out the life of a Colleton County attorney's wife in the local motel, Detective Dwight Bryant gets the case. And since he's best pals with Judge Deborah Knott, who happens to be breaking in her new house nearby, the two gather clues in tandem. The victim's promiscuity surprises no one except her husband, so there are plenty of suspects, including a partner in the Knott family law firm. Elsewhere, a preacher's wife finds out about her husband's infidelity, while their son tracks Hurricane Fran, coming up the North Carolina coast, for his science project. A rousing combination of natural disaster and narrative creativity, this seventh novel in the Deborah Knott series is highly recommended. [Mystery Guild main selection.] Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
From the Publisher
"Judge Deborah Knott of the Colleton County (N.C.) District Court is one of the most delightful and original of contemporary amateur detectives. The youngest of 12 children--and the only girl--she knows everyone in the county and is never shy about poking her nose in all manner of suspicious happenings. Then she sits readers down for a cosy chat about her adventures, as though they were old friends. In the series's seventh novel (Homes Fires), when promiscuous Lynn Bullock is found strangled in the Orchid Motel wearing black lace underwear, suspects include several local men as well as the deceased's attorney husband, Jason, and Deborah's womanizing cousin Reid Stephenson. But Deborah saw all of these men playing softball at the time of the murder. The judge helps investigate the crime, but soon she has to confront another killer--ferocious Hurricane Fran, fast approaching from the coast. Maron immerses the reader in the down-home, inbred world of the rural South, where intertwined family histories are common knowledge and some old-timers, like Deborah's unrepentant bootlegger father, still live by obsolete customs. Colleton County also has a growing population of black and female professionals, as well as spreading residential development to accommodate suburbanites from the coastal cities 150 miles away. One of Maron's many skills is her ability to weave into her story the social changes coming to this region with the speed of that hurricane." -- Publishers Weekly (2000)
