"Death's Half Acre"
By Margaret Maron
Grand Central Publishing
262 pages, $24.99
Growing up in a trailer park with a drunk for a father and a tramp for a mother, Candace Bradshaw seemed to have few prospects. But a strong work ethic and good looks allowed her to marry well, take over a profitable business and win a seat on the county board of commissioners.
Her suicide at a moment when she seemed to be savoring her success got town gossips going. But news that she had been murdered caused real distress.
Margaret Maron's latest whodunit featuring the insatiably curious Judge Deborah Knott shows much of her usual strength in character and plot development, although with fewer surprises than last year's "Hard Row."
Her 14th novel in the Knott series focuses on development in rural North Carolina and the problems caused by it. One of Maron's strengths is bringing the South, or at least her area of it, to life.
In "Death's Half Acre," she skillfully portrays the growing tension between family farmers and suburbanites moving into the subdivisions rapidly sprouting outside of Raleigh. Longtime residents are disturbed by traffic to big-box stores and teenagers riding all-terrain vehicles through their crops.
But the newcomers also bring jobs and money, and plenty of area developers and commissioners seem to be profiting.
When Knott starts poking into allegations that Bradshaw might have been using her office to help herself, she finds that some of the county's best known and most respected leaders also are suspect. She also learns the editor of the local newspaper was looking into such matters when he was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
As always, Maron weaves in a couple subplots that keep things interesting and allow her to touch on a range of social issues. She introduces them in vignettes that open the novel. This makes the first few dozen pages somewhat confusing as Maron jumps from one character to another, often with oblique references to ongoing characters that new readers would be hard-pressed to follow.
But once she settles into Knott's perspective, the narrative starts to flow, and the judge's inner dialogue makes it seem like a visit with an old friend.
