Killer Market (Deborah Knott Mysteries) - Hardcover

For genteel pleasures of a teatime whodunit, I recommended Margaret Maron's wellmannered Southern mysteries. The stories are served with a buttery regional flavor and Deborah Knott, a North Carolina district court judge, presides over them like a proper hostess dispensing good judgment in child-custody case of two drunken hunters who have shot up a discarded truck tire, thinking they had bagged an alligator. And she tempers it all with kindness. "I am always drawn to faces that seem to look on human folly with compassion and amusement," she says in KILLER MARKET.

Making the country circuit, the judge pays a court call on High Point, a Piedmont mill town whose population doubles when 70,000 visitors converge for a week of serious trading at the International Home Furnishings Market. Unable to find a hotel room, Deborah attaches herself to local friends, has an Alice-in-Wonderland encounter with a dotty furniture designer and discovers the expiring body of an industry executive swinging on a piece of "motion" furniture. Maron makes a full inside sweep of this vast trade show, but the real attraction is her polished style, high-gloss combination of original observations and clever turns of phrase.

MARGARET MARON grew up on a farm near Raleigh, North Carolina, but for many years lived in Brooklyn, New York. When she returned to her North Carolina roots with her artist-husband, Joe, she began a series based on her own background. The first book, Bootlegger's Daughter, became a Washington Post best-seller that swept the major mystery awards for its year and is among the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Later Deborah Knott novels Up Jumps the Devil, Storm Track, and Three-Day Town each won the Agatha Award for Best Novel. In 2008, Maron received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the state's highest civilian honor. And in 2013, The Mystery Writers of America celebrated Maron's contributions to the mystery genre by naming her a Grand Master-an honor first bestowed on Agatha Christie. In 2016, she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. To find out more about the author, you can visit MargaretMaron.com. Ebooks are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.