Up Jumps the Devil by Margaret Maron

Up Jumps the Devil by Margaret Maron

After Margaret Maron's first Deborah Knott novel, Bootlegger's Daughter, ran away with the top mystery awards in 1993, this highly acclaimed series has continued to whet our appetite for superb fiction in which the setting is, as the Houston Chronicle noted, so rich in detail and description of the New South that you can almost hear the North Carolina twang and taste the barbecue. Now, in her fourth outing, Deborah Knott is again in the driver's seat, roaring down dirt roads and checking out crime scenes until . . .

UP JUMPS THE DEVIL.

When truck driver and childhood neighbor Dallas Stancil is shot and killed in his own backyard, Deborah figures she owes his memory at least the respectful ritual of taking his widow one of her Aunt Zell's best chicken casseroles.

Mistake Number One.

Dallas wasn't rich, but with development eating up the farms and forests of North Carolina, his land is suddenly worth a fortune. His trashy, chain-smoking third wife and grown stepchildren are all too aware of its value. Opportunists--including one of Deborah's own brothers--are coming out of the woodwork. And big money makes people do bad things.

The Stancils have lived side-by-side with Deborah's family for several generations. When another tragedy strikes, a long-hidden mistake jumps out of her past. She can run him out of town, but ignoring him would be Mistake Number Two.

All around the changing South, Deborah sees hunting dogs, rowdy funerals, backwoods moonshine stills, and long-bed pickups clashing with BMW-driving professionals and housing tracts. With one foot in the rural past and the other in today's high-tech present, she knows her personal world is changing, too. This bootlegger's daughter sits on the judicial bench and sees both sides of the law. But she also feels the tug of her roots.and the pull of her heart.

Margaret Maron grew up in the country near Raleigh, North Carolina, but for many years lived in Brooklyn, New York. When she and her artist husband returned to the farm that had been in her family for a hundred years, she began a series based on her own background. The first book, Bootlegger's Daughter, became a Washington Post bestseller that swept the major mystery awards for its year -- winning the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards for Best Novel -- and is among the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Later, her Deborah Knott novels Up Jumps the Devil, Storm Track, and Three-Day Town each also won the Agatha Award for Best Novel. Margaret is also the author of the Sigrid Harald series of detective novels. In 2008, Maron received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the highest civilian honor the state bestows on its authors. And in 2013, the Mystery Writers of America celebrated Maron's contributions to the mystery genre by naming her a Grand Master -- an honor first bestowed on Agatha Christie. To find out more about her, you can visit MargaretMaron.com.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780446604062
ISBN 10	0446604062
Title	Up Jumps the Devil
Author	Margaret Maron
Series	Deborah Knott Mystery Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown & Company
Year published	1997-07-01
Number of pages	273
Prizes	Winner of Agatha Awards (Novel) 1996
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.