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Rituals of the Season

by Margaret Maron

Rituals of the Season is a continuation of the series on Judge Deborah Knott – not that you need to read any of the others before cracking this book. However, as an avid mystery fan myself, I'd advise you to read them all, starting with 'The Bootlegger's Daughter,' if only to see how Deborah Knott got to be where she is in this novel. Margaret Maron is one of those people who believe in advancing their fictional character in age and circumstance along with every new plot. Ms. Maron is an excellent writer and North Carolina seems to produce a number of them, especially the female kind!

Rituals of the Season opens with Christmas just around the corner. It also begins with a murder on a North Carolina Interstate. The murdered woman is Tracy Johnson, who unfortunately, also had a small daughter in the rear of her car, dead from a heavy Christmas gift which struck her when the dead woman's car went careening off the road.

Judge Deborah Knott is about to marry Sheriff (Major) Dwight Bryant on the 22nd of December, and is dealing frantically with last-minute wedding arrangements as well as Christmas. Learning of Tracy Johnson's death simply adds to the confusion. Tracy Johnson was a prosecutor, and a very good one; but everybody connected to either the courtroom or the police force is horrified by the fact that her adopted baby daughter was also killed in addition to the brutal murder itself.

Add in a sub-plot concerning a woman on death row, about to meet her own death in less than a month, who is claiming innocence. Add the two young people who are trying to scrape up some evidence to set her free. Add also Deborah's best friend and maid-of-honor Portland, who is very obviously pregnant and due around the same time as the wedding. Add some policemen who are after drug peddlers. Add another murder which is initially thought to be a suicide. Add a host of minor characters. The result is Rituals of the Season.

Margaret Maron gives us a quick twist of the plot near the end of the book, after the reader is fairly sure they know who the murderer is. That's simply one of Ms. Maron's usual trademarks! And of course the use of quotes from Florence Hartley's 1873 'The Ladies' Book of Etiquette' – so appropriate for the content of each chapter – is just so much sugar on the already flavored cereal. We applaud Ms. Maron's latest creation.

Alan Paul Curtis

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