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    Death's Half Acre
    Death's Half Acre
    Death's Half Acre
    Audiobook9 hours

    Death's Half Acre

    Written by Margaret Maron

    Narrated by C.J. Critt

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Margaret Maron's Judge Deborah Knott mysteries set in rural North Carolina are cherished by discerning readers who value authentic characters and intriguing plots. As housing sprawl creeps across the land, farmers are feeling the pinch. County commissioners have been making lucrative land deals in secret, and now murder brings Deborah and Sheriff Bryant into the middle of a major dispute.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 26, 2008
    ISBN9781436183581
    Death's Half Acre

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    Reviews for Death's Half Acre

    4/5

    128 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Unchecked urbanization has begun to eclipse the North Carolina countryside. As farms give way to shoddy mansions, farmers struggle to slow the rampant growth. In the shadows, corrupt county commissioners use their political leverage to make profitable deals with new developers. A murder will pull Judge Deborah Knott and Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant into the middle of this bitter dispute and force them to confront some dark realities.
    • 4/5
      Deb'rah takes us on a look into the sleazy world of real estate chicanery and blackmail when the chairperson of the county commissioners apparent suicide is found to be murder. This self-made successful woman may have paid the price of her wheeling, dealing, and extortion so there are many suspects. A missing flash drive causes another death and some dangerous intervention by the Judge. Keezie seems to be engaged in funny business with a sleazy preacher. Another facet of old-time values eroding in this good episode of this fine series
    • 3/5
      As usual, I enjoyed this Margaret Maron mystery set in the North Carolina countryside just east of Raleigh. The story was well paced, and the performer did a nice job of the audiobook reading.
    • 4/5
      Margaret Maron's books are consistently good reading, and this one is no exception. The umpty-leventh in her Judge Deborah Knott series, which began with the Edgar-winning [book: The Bootlegger's Daughter] in 1992, [book: Death's Half-Acre] finds recently-married Deborah still working on the ramifications of being married to a deputy sheriff, being a stepmother, and also coming to the realization that her larger-than-life father will not live forever. Fear not, though, Kezzie Knott is still as wily as ever in this story and his subplot not only brings the book to a satisfying conclusion but also illustrates some key points about rural and small-town culture.
      The major plot line involves exurban sprawl development and its effect on the rural culture. In North Carolina it's farms which are being encroached on by people who are looking for country life, but can't bear the smell of manure; hereabouts where I live it's the working waterfront that comes into conflict with some of the incomers. So I get where Maron's characters are coming from. Maron is also very clear-sighted about the class structure of the communities she writes about. And, Deborah Knott's large family of brothers and their entourages not only help the plot along but provide comic relief from time to time. Maron is able to use current events and problems without making her books into "problem novels" -- you may learn something, but it will always be entertaining. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Deborah Knott is again involved in one of husband Dwight's cases. When a local city commissioner is killed Deborah is hunting for reasons. As usual there are various family members involved in one way or another, brother Will hired the daughter of the victim the day of the killing. Daddy Knott is working soemthing funny but has kept his council and doesn't let Deborah know his plans.

      There are issues of kickbacks to various commissioners, family feuds and just a whole host of mini-stories tied up in this addition to Judge Knot series.

      I love Deborah and Dwight, not to mention the whole Knott family. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series.
    • 5/5
      Maron is one of my favorite authors. This is one of the Judge Deborah Knott series
    • 4/5
      Ah, the encroachment of so called 'civilized' society into the wilder parts of our world.There's all sorts of things going on in this Deborah Knott series book. There's a bit of a problem that Deborah personally runs into, there's a bit of a murder, an apparent suicide and a bit of a treasure hunt. Ah, and it's about family, all sorts of family.Of course, my favorite family is the wide and varied Knott family. Kezzie (Deb's father) is such a unique character and in this book his character gets to play a little and really gets fleshed out nicely.It was a fun book. One tiny nitpicky comment though. On the one hand it's always been a bit hard to keep track of which brother is in what order in the family Sort of a pain sometimes, though it helps if there's the 'family tree' in the front of the book. And, of course, what evens that nitpick out is the fact that her characters have such deep histories and there are so many connections between the characters that it makes the novel so much richer.
    • 4/5
      A good mystery, well-constructed. The continuing characters are interesting and mostly realistic. Even the villains are realistic and recognizable.
    • 4/5
      This is book 14 in the Judge Deborah Knott mystery series. It follows Deborah and her family in NC. I love the series, though I didn't care as much for the story and mystery characters in this one. It seemed off somehow. Still I enjoyed Deborah and her friends and family.I can't wait for the next one, Sand Sharks. It is in hardcover and I am waiting for it to go into paperback.In this book the story is about the rapid development they are experiencing in what was rural NC and how their way of life along with the farms are being sold. Its a theme that has been running through a lot of the books. The focus is on Candace Bradshaw, a county commissioner who is nothing more than a rubber stamp for the powerful men on the commission. The men are using their positions to green light any development, as long a they get something in return. People know its going on, but its hidden enough to keep them out of jail. Candace is from the wrong side of the tracks. She has worked to make something of herself. Unfortunately she is not book smart, not classy, and only interested in making up for past deprivations. She has a husband, from whom she is separated, and a college age daughter from whom she is estranged. Candace is greedy, shallow and only interested in herself. Candace is also a bombshell and perfectly willing to use her body to get what she wants.I think my problem is that Candace is 2 complete cliches. She is the typical empty-headed (in terms of business and real personal relations) sexpot on the make. She is also the cliche of the poor child who is driven to make up for her past and prevent it from happening again. On top of that, there are lots of portrayals of women using sex to get what they want, I really expected better from Maron. Candace also has a very successful cleaning business that cleans offices in the area. It was how she became prominent enough to come to the attention of the men on the commission. It was very obvious to me how the cleaning company was used right from the start. The other thread in this book was a look at religion and how some preachers confuse themselves with the deity they claim to represent. They too are getting in on the land grab, doing it in the name of god to mask their greed. Kezzy Knott, Deborah's father, cooks up a plan to let the greed of one high flying preacher expose what he really stands for. Of course it never deals with the foolishness of the people who are willing to be mislead in their quest for eternal safety. Still I liked seeing Kezzy in action.Eventually Candace is killed, and becomes the subject of a police investigation to find her killer. It turns out the Candace was also blackmailing someone, so the search is on for the victim and what she had to hold over him or her. Others die too, and Deborah gets involved in sleuthing and is almost killed.Not one of the better books in the series, but I still enjoyed the time with Deborah and her family.
    • 3/5
      I still miss Margaret Maron’s series character Sigrid Haraldson. But her Deborah Knott series has been so successful that it seems unlikely that Maron will ever leave North Carolina for New York, or step off the bench and back into the police station.Fortunately, the Judge Knott series remains fun to read, if a tad too cozy for my taste. I normally zip through these books in about a day, just to catch up with Deborah, her husband, her stepson, her 11 brothers and her father, a former bootlegger. They’re also interesting books to read in terms of technique, because Maron pulls off some stunts that most mystery writers couldn’t get away with, such as switching the point of view or changing voice (from first person to third and back again). Without using these tricks, Maron couldn’t play fair with her audience about solving the mystery (though she still doesn’t manage it in these two books, in my opinion); and she couldn’t have several parallel stories playing out at once. A more skillful writer would probably be able to manage all that while staying in a single character’s point of view and voice, but here the changes simply seem to make the books feel all the more comfortable and unchallenging – good for a quick read, but not intended to make the reader think too much.Death's Half Acre tells the story of a county commissioner who tends to favor developers who are quickly despoiling the countryside with ticky-tacky houses, and to have a little too much money at her disposal. Unless she’s milking her cleaning business of profits and failing to pay what she’s supposed to pay to her ex-husband or taking bribes, there doesn’t seem to be any way she could afford to pay cash for her new house. When she is murdered, it looks as if she might also be engaged in blackmail. But who was her victim, if there was one? And who killed her?The real treat of Death's Half Acre, though, is the parallel mystery we get involving Deborah’s father, Kezzie. In the first chapter, a man approaches Kezzie Knott to ask his help in preventing his grandmother from giving away her land to an apparently corrupt preacher. We’ve already seen this misogynist at work in the prologue, when he forces his wife to perform a distasteful act in front of his entire congregation on Easter Sunday. So we want to see what Kezzie will get up to, and his machinations don’t disappoint.Deborah gets into more trouble than she should in this book, and nearly pays a high price for it. Her motive for failing to go to the police with key evidence seems to me rather weak, but that sometimes happens in cozies. Still, one would think a judge would have more sense.Deborah seems to have her head on a bit straighter in Sand Sharks, which takes place oceanside during a judges’ conference. The plot here is a bit tighter than in Death's Half Acre, but the mystery of who did the killing is a lot less fair. The real joy of this book is watching Deborah interact with her fellow judges, including Will Blackstone, who readers might remember from an earlier book (I sure did, and I was chuckling almost from the moment he made his first appearance as a result). I enjoyed the war stories the judges tell one another about their work, the description of the topics at the conference, and the camaraderie the judges share. Perhaps it’s because I’m a lawyer and have been to similar conferences myself, but this just felt comfortable and right.I read Maron’s books with the expectation that I’ll get a pleasant couple of hours out of them, and that expectation is always met. There is absolutely no challenge here, not even much of a challenge to use my imagination. But they’re fun. One can’t complain about that.
    • 4/5
      Margaret Maron is one of my favorite mystery authors. I particularly like her Deborah Knott series and this book is part of it. Her main characters have a depth to them that keeps me coming back.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book. I enjoy the characters. As usual the mystery mingles Deborah's personal and professional life.
    • 5/5
      14th in the Judge Deborah Knott series set in North Carolina.Colleton County has been growing by leaps and bounds, mostly due to an influx of Northerners. Minor misdemeanors and some felonies, due to a classic culture clash, now show up regularly in Deborah’s court, some of which are wryly funny.What shows up suddenly in Dwight’s bailiwick is the murder of a very successful local businesswoman, Candace Bradshaw, who is also a county commisioner. There is a small but significant movement in the county to slow growth so that there can be more thoughtful planning for development, but Candace, thought to be in the pocket of developers, has consistently led the vote for unrestrained growth. Her death has political ramifications throughout the county. Initial investigation brings up the potential for the revelation of the real reason Deborah was appointed judge after her first primary bid failed 4 years before—essentially a blackmail her father Kezzie Knott pulled off with her full knowledge and acquiescence. Naturally, Deborah is not keen on this old secret coming to light.Maron has as usual deftly woven modern issues in with what has become a police procedural series ever since Deborah’s marriage to Dwight Bryant made him an equal protagonist in the series. That has definitely been to the good, keeping interest and tension high. Deborah herself has matured appropriately as a character, from a single early 30s, pert, sometimes brittle personality to a still sparkling but steady wife and stepmother to an 8 year old child. While some things have been lost, others have been gained.What has been lost, though gradually, is the gentle Southern Baptist way that Deborah viewed life. That’s too bad, because it was a piece of color in this series that stood out. Maron still keeps her regionalisms, but this book really is focused on the dramatic changes that have come to the Old South with the influx of Northerners—both the good and the bad. However, the old Southern hellfire-and-damnation religion does appear in the plot in an interesting and modern way that is reminiscent of recent evangelical scandals.Maron appropriately uses politics as well. I don’t think there is any doubt that Maron herself is a “yellow dog” Democrat; Deborah’s enthusiasm seems very personal! The book was published in August 2008, which means that it was most likely finished before Barack Obama made his dramatic rise in the primaries. I can hardly wait for the next book that I'm sure will detail Deborah’s giddy joy at North Carolina voting Democratic for the first time in decades, and voting for the first black President of the US!The plot is very good, as usual, although (as usual) nothing exceptional. What is exceptional is Maron’s extraordinarily deft handling of a series that is now in its 14th installment and still strong—whose main strength is the characters who populate her books, real people, who lead real lives, ones that grab and hold the reader’s attention. This is especially true of Deborah, in whom interest never flags. Such character development sets this series head and shoulders above even the most popular hard-boiled police procedurals whose protagonists—their lack of real lives or connections, their drinking and cynicism, really get boring after the 4th or 5th book. Deborah, Dwight, Cal, Seth, Minnie, Mayleen, Kezzie and all the rest are too lively, too real to bore.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      The latest of many in Maron's Deborah Knott series, abut the lawyer/judge daughter of a bootlegger. In this volume a local business woman is murdered, and Deborah's husband Dwight, a policeman, is investigating. As usual, Deborah gets involved. Good, but not excellent, entry in the series - which still makes it better than most books. It does provide a thoughtful picture of land development and its consequences in once rural communities.
    • 3/5
      Another serviceable addition in the Judge Deborah Knott series. The mystery was fairly bland and it wasn't too hard to figure out a variety of the subplots...mostly it gets by on the charming and colorful characters we've come to enjoy.