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Rating: 
Summary: Southern Melodrama
Review: As a big fan of Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott series, I was really looking forward to reading this stand-alone book. Unfortunately I was disappointed by what I found. The book has the obligatory complex family tree at the beginning and a beleagured heroine in Amy Steadman, the main heiress of her grandmother's fortune. After her grandmother's untimely death, supposedly at the hands of a mysterious intruder, Amy goes to her North Carolina home to clean up her things and sign the papers to sell the house. She becomes reacquainted with family members whom she hasn't seen in years, and discovers that all of them stand to benefit financially from her grandmother's death. She also looks into her mother's suicide which occurred when she was a small child. On top of this, Amy suspects that her husband Eric is having an affair, but actually has nothing to prove it. She flirts with a law officer in North Carolina and keeps putting off her husband's calls, a jarring note to her supposedly decent character. Her half-sister Beth appears on the scene and her character zigs and zags its way thorugh the book in a way that lacks credence. After reading this book, I look forward to the next Deborah Knott story with great anticipation.
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Summary: Missing Deb'rah
Review: I enjoyed this book, but I missed Deborah Knott and Mr. Kezzie and the others. I was glad to see Dwight and the FBI man show up but wished they had been more instrumental in the plot. Certainly worth your time, but not as funny as the other books by Ms. Maron.
Rating:
Summary: An Overpopulated Mystery with Fascinating Family Dynamics
Review: I was sorry that the talented Ms. Margaret Maron decided to make this book a mystery rather than a multigenerational family saga. The family part of the story is rich in many dimensions, including intrigue, emotion, improper behavior and a struggle for power. Perhaps the richest and most intriguing dimension is that a major family fortune rests on the slight imagination of one young child. We enter into the story as a member of the third generation, Ms. Amy Steadman, decides to flee to North Carolina to clean out the home in which her grandmother was recently murdered before agreeing to sell the property. It turns out that not all is smooth in Amy's life, despite her wealth. Amy is suspicious of her husband's lack of interest in her, dislikes her father's philandering, finds her siblings to be awkward to deal with, misses her Mom who committed suicide when Amy was small, and finds her myriad relatives to be confusing in their behavior. All of this takes a more sinister turn when Amy begins receiving threatening telephone calls . . . and finds herself in danger. What will this sheltered woman do to protect herself and her family? What dark secrets are being hidden? I found the mystery to have two serious drawbacks. First, this book is way overpopulated with characters who are in Amy's family. Thankfully, Ms. Maron provides a family tree in the beginning. But I couldn't seem to remember who was who because there are so many of them. Do you really want to keep track of 30 plus people in one family? I found most of them to be hard to distinguish in any way that added to the story. Second, the mystery itself is only marginally mysterious enough to require any thought. I found that the ending was telegraphed in way too many ways . . . and too much too long to develop. In fact, without all of the extraneous (to me) characters, this mystery would have not been difficult enough to be interesting. I hope that Ms. Maron will consider writing another book about Amy and her family that will not be a mystery. This family is too good to be lost in thinly veiled mysteries!
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