{"id":725,"date":"2012-05-14T08:14:18","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T15:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=725"},"modified":"2012-05-14T08:14:18","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T15:14:18","slug":"yall-come-back-now-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=725","title":{"rendered":"Y’all come back now, hear?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again, Bob Moyer and I have read the same book. I reviewed Margaret Maron\u2019s latest for the Greensboro News & Record, and Bob is reviewing it for Briar Patch Books. I may have treated Maron\u2019s book a tad more gently than Bob did, but we are in agreement that the new one is not among her best. In it, Maron takes her heroine, Judge Deborah Knott, from rural North Carolina to New York City, where she meets the heroine of Maron\u2019s first mystery series, a police detective. The idea may have been to give new life to the earlier series. I suspect, however, that the legions of fans of Maron\u2019s newer series will for the most part just be relieved when the good judge heads home to Colleton County.<\/p>\n

By Robert Moyer<\/p>\n

THREE-DAY TOWN. By Margaret Maron. Grand Central. 278 pages. $25.99<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Margaret Maron has not only carved out a large niche in the soft-boiled mystery genre; she has also filled it with enthusiastic fans. They wait eagerly for the next episode like some people hanker for a tall glass of sweet tea.\u00a0 Her heroine, Judge Deborah Knott, cheerily dispenses justice and dispels family dilemmas in \u201cColleton County,\u201d North Cackalacky; she usually ends up in the middle of a murder investigation somewhere in the state as well (she\u2019s a district judge).<\/p>\n

In her latest adventure, Maron takes the judge to Manhattan, the Three-Day Town<\/em> of the title, for two reasons:\u00a0a\u00a0honeymoon with her new hubby, and a first-time meeting with Detective Sigrid Harald, Maron\u2019s heroine from her first series.\u00a0Staying in a friend\u2019s Upper West Side apartment, Judge Knott is to deliver a package to Sigrid from her grandmother, a grand doyenne back in Colleton County. In the package is a bronze statuette involving some suggestive positions her hubby suggests they try.\u00a0 Before Judge Knott can hand it over, someone uses it to bash in the building superintendent\u2019s brains.\u00a0 A snowstorm hits at the same time, and the building, along with the city, pretty well shuts down.\u00a0 Between schlepping out to shop for shoes and groceries, she can\u2019t keep herself from meddling in the murder investigation.\u00a0In the process she almost gets herself killed.<\/p>\n

The apartment building is an interesting setting \u2013 there\u2019s a lot hidden in all those closets.\u00a0 Maron lets loose a lot of threads in her narrative, however, that don\u2019t lead anywhere.\u00a0Just to maintain her Tar Heel ties, Maron also gives the inestimable judge a minor \u201ccrime\u201d to solve by phone back home.\u00a0 Finally, the contrast with the no-nonsense Harald does not serve the judge, who refers to her hubby as a Prince Charming and actually says \u201cCarpe Diem, y\u2019all,\u201d very well.\u00a0 Sometimes that glass of Southern tea can be just a little too sweet.\u00a0 Of course, that may just be to a lot of readers\u2019 taste.\u00a0 As for me, I\u2019m looking for a bitter dose of the dark side from Walter Mosley\u2019s next two books, which have just come.\u00a0 To each his own, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, Bob Moyer and I have read the same book. I reviewed Margaret Maron\u2019s latest for the Greensboro News & Record, and Bob is reviewing it for Briar Patch Books. I may have treated Maron\u2019s book a tad more gently than Bob did, but we are in agreement that the new one is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[251,250,27,166],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mysteries","category-southern-fiction","tag-deborah-knott","tag-margaret-maron","tag-mystery","tag-north-carolina-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}