Margaret Maron (1938–2021)

After beautiful young cheerleader dies in a car crash that was not an accident, Judge Deborah Knott and sheriff's deputy Dwight Bryant must uncover what really happened before more death further clouds the Christmas season in North Carolina's Colleton County.

Deborah informally gathers information from friends and family about circumstances surrounding the cheerleader’s death while her husband does a formal investigation. There’s a small town feel to the story. There’s a good mix of warm Christmas moments with Deborah’s big extended family. The ending is a bit implausible but it was still an easy story to read.… (mere)

I was disappointed in this book...largely because it wandered all over the place. Descriptions of clothing and scenes were long and drawn out. The plot was hard to follow and the characters There was quite a bit of time wasted chatting about locations and people in North Carolina about which I cannot relate because I've not been there, nor lived there. In fact, it was so boing that I skipped about three hours of this nearly ten hour listen....just to figure out if she won the election. Not as bad as a DNF, but nearly so.… (mere)

Set in a fictional version of Johnston County, North Carolina—though Maron makes the standard disclaimer that it is all fiction—Bootlegger’s Daughter has Deborah Knotts practicing law and running for judge. She must live down her father’s reputation as the county’s most famous bootlegger and her own stories from her own wild youth. An 18-year-old girl she used to babysit asks her to investigate her mother’s unsolved murder. It is a cold case, and the scandal does not mix well with electioneering. Cozy and not-so-cozy mysteries like this one profit from settings with lively local detail. No one did it better than Margaret Maron, whose Deborah Knott mysteries eventually ran to 20 volumes. Set in its own time in the early nineties, the story mixes nostalgia with hard-edged themes of race and gender. Four stars.… (mere)