The biggest part of Maron’s magic is that small community feeling that’s on every page of her novel. Readers will feel as though they know these people in this town within just a few short chapters. Not only that, but they’ll learn the legal system and the personnel involved with it as well. The vernacular and setting reminded me a lot of author Bill Crider’s Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries set in Texas.
In the beginning it seems as though Deborah and Dwight are working two separate cases. Deborah is trying to locate a husband in a divorce court proceeding while Dwight and the sheriff’s office are picking up pieces of a murdered man spread around the county. Of course, readers will probably guess that the two cases are connected (even though the body parts no longer are!) and that the two investigations ultimately lead them to the same place.
But it’s the journey Deborah, Dwight, and the reader take to get there, and the things that happen at home and between family members, that make this a real page-turner. You just can’t get enough of the family problems and issues that are ladled throughout the murder mystery. Maron provides a delicious concoction of puzzle and gossip that is guaranteed to keep readers up past bedtime.
Article comments
1 - sch
Dwight's ex-wife was murdered. She did not just pick up and leave to take care of herself. That it what the last book "Winter's Child" was all about.