TOWN COMES TO COUNTRY IN DEATH’S HALF ACRE, THE FOURTEENTH NOVEL ABOUT NORTH CAROLINA DISTRICT COURT JUDGE DEBORAH KNOTT

Dear Friends:

If it’s July, it must be almost time for a new Deborah Knott novel. Death’s Half Acre will be published August 20th. Set in Deborah’s home county where rampant growth is threatening her family’s traditional way of life, a subplot revolves around her daddy. Is Kezzie Knott falling under the spell of a fundamentalist preacher or is he involved in the theft of a bag of jewelry that made national headlines twenty-five years earlier?

As I said, the official publication date is August 20, but copies may be available before that date and will certainly be available after it. I understand that everyone cannot afford to buy the book, especially in these economic hard times, but if you do plan to buy it, please try to time your purchase as close to August 20 as you can. If we can amass a bunch of sales around that time, making the New York Times’ bestseller list becomes a real possibility.

This is the list publishers pay attention to. These are the writers who automatically get their book contracts extended so that their readers can continue to read about places and characters they’ve grown to enjoy. In the past you’ve helped my books make the Washington Post list and to bobble around on the Times’ extended list, but never the top 15. It would be lovely if Death’s Half Acre could break into that rank.

I shall be signing the new book at Quail Ridge Books and Music on August 22. If you’re in the area, please come out for cake and “the fellowshipping,” as Deborah’s brother Haywood is fond of saying. (Hope you enjoy Haywood’s appearance in this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.) In the meantime, have you taken a look at my newly remodeled website (www.MargaretMaron.com)? The opening page is one that I plan to update every week. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions. You may also wish to get eMail alerts about upcoming books by registering for Hachette’s mystery newsletter. Details are on my website. Also, all future mailings will come to you from this email address, margaret@margaretmaron.com. Please set your spam filters to accept mail from this new address if you care to receive future mailings.

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And now back to the new book....

Things keep changing in Colleton County, North Carolina, my fictional piece of the state. Once nicely removed from the universities/high tech developers/pharmaceutical labs of the Research Triangle (Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham), those centers have drawn so many workers from all over the country that Deborah’s neighborhood is getting their overflow. Beautiful, fertile farms are being drawn and quartered by orange surveyors’ ribbons into half-acre lots in treeless developments. Naturally, those thousands of new residents want their “country living” to come with town amenities: organic grocery stores, spas and gyms, pizza palaces, restaurants, etc., etc.

With very little regulation from Colleton’s county commissioners, greedy developers act as if they’ve been given the keys to the candy store, while long-time residents and farmers, who would rather grow sweet potatoes and cotton than houses, find their way of living under siege. Hog farmers know their lagoons stink, but they were there years before a hundred houses went up next door, and they have no control over which way the wind blows. Folks who have always kept a few chickens for fresh, hormone-free eggs suddenly find manicured lawns next to their henhouses, and new neighbors who complain about roosters that crow at sunrise, even on the weekends. Soybean farmers go out to check their fields and find the ground gouged and the plants mangled by suburban kids on four-wheelers who have no land of their own on which to ride and no concept of the damage they are doing to someone’s cash crops.

These are some of the real clashes that wind up in Judge Deborah Knott’s fictional court in Death’s Half Acre. What will not wind up in her court is the person who killed one of the county commissioners. Candace Bradshaw loved being chairman of the board—loved the power almost more than she loved the money certain developers were slipping her on the side for favorable rulings—but when her own greed threatened another’s, she was killed in a clumsy attempt to make her death look like suicide.

As Deborah tries to balance her roles as judge, wife, stepmother, and sister to eleven older brothers, she finds herself drawn into whatever mischief her scapegrace, ex-bootlegging daddy might be up to. Kezzie Knott was seen tucking a pair of diamond earrings into the pocket of his blue chambray shirt. And why is he suddenly interested in the state of his soul? Does his involvement with a sanctimonious preacher signal a sense of his inevitable mortality? Before the book ends, Deborah herself becomes the killer’s target and gets a whiff of her own mortality.

One of the perks of belonging to my eList is that subscribers get to read an excerpt of Death’s Half Acre before anyone else. Just click here for a sneak preview. I hope you enjoy it!

Best wishes for a great summer and don’t forget: August 20!

Margaret Maron