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The Hidden Assassinsby: Robert Wilson |
Home Firesby Margaret MaronHome Fires doesn't disappoint fans of Margaret Maron's Judge Deborah Knott series, based in North Carolina, a location familiar to Ms. Maron (since that's the area where she was born and bred). A delight to read, Home Fires is a mystery with a racial undercurrent, highlighting the lingering, red-neck bigotry remaining in certain pockets of most Southern states. The book faithfully describes a resentment that still runs rampant against our African Americans.Judge Deborah Knott's nephew, A.K., is seventeen and looking like a replica of his father at that age in both looks and (especially) deeds. A.K. has been hanging around with bad company, Raymond Bagwell and Charles Starling. The three white boys had desecrated a graveyard, knocking over markers, leaving beer cans strewn around and spray painting the gravestones with hate slogans. Caught, and appearing in court before Judge Luther Parker, Deborah manages to attend their trial after completing her own courtroom activities. Grace King Avery, a local woman and former schoolteacher, speaks up for Raymond who is working as her gardener. The boys are sentenced according to their previous criminal records – and in this case, A.K. only has to spend three weekends in jail. Balm of Gilead at Starling's Crossroads is the first black church the arsonist attacks. An old former wooden gas station, it burns quickly and completely. Spray painted across the front of the building, in time to be seen before its collapse, are the same type of hate slogans found in the cemetery. The words are also formed with the same type and same color of paint. And the burning happens shortly after Charles Starling is released from his first weekend prison time. As it progresses, the story integrates Deborah's love life, her re-election campaign, the building of her new house, the reconstruction of a broken angel in the aforementioned graveyard, and the troubles of a Colleton County black female prosecutor named Cyl Degraffenreid. Then two more black churches are torched: One is Mount Olive, an historical landmark, where only part of the main sanctuary is destroyed although the Sunday School portion – a separate building – is totaled. The second is the already disintegrating Burning Heart of God Holiness Tabernacle, with the female black pastor's rickety trailer attached. Both eyesores happen to be within view of Grace Avery's house, but the firemen respond to Mount Olive first, since that's far more important to be saved. The rather outspoken and vindictive Reverend Sister Byantha Renfrow Williams, pastor of Burning Heart of God, is saved, along with her cat, but her dilapidated church burns to the ground. The body of Mount Olive's sexton is discovered among the ruins of the choir seats, which upgrades the crime from arson to murder. And later, still another body is discovered. Meanwhile Cyl Degraffenreid has recognized attorney Wallace Adderly as the same man who took her uncle Isaac to Boston – an uncle she hasn't heard from since. When the suspense of who killed whom and why the fires were set is finally resolved, the reader may at last relinquish a hold on Home Fires and realize he or she has been avidly following Judge Deborah Knott through still another great mystery. Home Fires, like most of Margaret Maron's work, is difficult to put down. Margaret Maron started writing later in life than most of her fellow mystery authors, but certainly lost no time in catching up or polishing her novels. Ms. Maron immediately won every American award possible for her very first work (The Bootlegger's Daughter), and continues to turn out gratifying, great stories in both the Judge Deborah Knott and Sigrid Harald series. Margaret Maron also continues to win awards! Alan Paul Curtis |
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