In the newest in her Judge Deborah Knott mystery series, Margaret Maron has her protagonist attending a summer conference for North Carolina district court judges in Wrightsville Beach, not far from Wilmington. She gets more than she bargained for, however, when a fellow attendee is murdered, and Deborah is the one who stumbles over the body. It is not long before another judge is run down by a car whose driver sped off after striking him. The suspects in the first incident are numerous, as the victim was not a man of high principles, or ethics. As Deborah was a witness, and suspicion runs high that the two attacks are connected, she becomes involved in the search for the killer.
The author prefaces each chapter with a quote from a well-known jurist of years past – and I do mean past – ranging from Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) going back to late-era B.C. and early A.D. (My favorite of these – well, the one that had me grinning – began the penultimate chapter, to wit: “Our ancestors established the rule that all women, because of their weakness of intellect, should be under the power of guardians,” attributed to Cicero (BC 106-47). The gorgeous descriptions of the Southern landscapes, and seascapes, only add to the enjoyment. Marital infidelity and dissolutions, and men with wandering eyes [among other body parts] – regardless of marital status – supply a theme running through the novel.
I greatly enjoyed the debates conducted in Deborah’s mind between “the preacher who lives in the back of my head” and her “inner pragmatist.” I have to admit that I found it a bit disconcerting when Deborah and her friends debate, shortly after the discovery of the body, if one or another of their colleagues might have killed the victim. On the other hand, at a later point, she and her fellow jurists feel that the initial attack “must have been a stranger killing because none of our fellow judges could possibly be a murderer.” Or could it actually be one of their own? The mystery thus presented is a good one, and the characters well-drawn; the novel is thoroughly entertaining, and it is recommended.
