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HIGH COUNTRY FALL
by Margaret Maron
Mysterious Press, August 2004
320 pages
$24.00
ISBN: 0892968087


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HIGH COUNTRY FALL is the tenth book in Margaret Maron's series about Judge Deborah Knott. I've enjoyed them all so far and this is no exception. Maron gives a superb picture of an imaginary small tourist town up in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina during the superb colour of a US fall.

It has always seemed to me a magnificent season for the USA with its fantastic colours compared to an English autumn. It is, indeed, the local colour that has always attracted me to this series of books -- the family and community relationships of North Carolina are fascinating and seem to me to be very well conveyed through casual conversations and formal exchanges.

Deborah Knott goes up to Cedar Gap five hours drive from her flatland home to dispense justice. She is pleased to escape from the excitement following the announcement of her engagement to her childhood friend, Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant.

Since she has family in the town of Cedar Gap she has a comfortable place to stay and ready-made family matters to complicate her working life. The suspicious deaths that occur do not involve her family directly but Deborah herself finds the puzzles worth unravelling particularly after she is personally involved. The turmoil of these murders reflects the turmoil she is experiencing as she evaluates her relationship with Dwight.

The North Carolinian setting is fascinating particularly since the author's creation of an extended family of Knotts gives enormous scope for showing the complex web of kinship within a clan. This is a cosy series with great depth and I find it fascinating; to an English reader who lived in the USA for a while in the 90s, although not in the South, the presentation of this aspect of US life is perennially interesting.

The story flowed very well and the solutions appeared feasible. Even if a reader had not read the previous novels about Deborah their enjoyment of this book would not be marred by any lack of background knowledge. HIGH COUNTRY FALL can stand alone, although the reader might wish to go back to previous books for the pleasure of reading more about Deborah's work and life.

Reviewed by Jennifer S. Palmer, January 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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