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Hard Row
  
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Hard Row (Hardcover)

by Margaret Maron (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Hardcover (Large Print) £31.95 £30.35 11 used & new from £9.26

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Mysterious Pr; Limited edition, No. 117 of only 250 copies, signed by the author. edition (30 Sep 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0892960388
  • ISBN-13: 978-0892960385
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Beware of Spoilers in Reviews about This Satisfying Mystery, 1 Oct 2007
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Hard Row (Hardcover)
All's well in the Deborah Knott series, to me, when Deborah is sitting on the bench as judge deciding cases. Hard Row is well endowed with such scenes. If you are a fan of the series, you would be foolish to skip this one: It's a gem. But I've noticed that some published reviews by prominent sources contain spoilers about this book. Be careful what you read in advance or you may lose some of the fun of this rewarding mystery.

The better mystery series with women as the detectives find a way to combine a look at family life with the cases at hand. Margaret Maron is particularly adept in Hard Row in developing that family element as Deborah and Dwight Bryant get used to married life with Dwight's son Cal who is eight. There is also a sequence of fun scenes involving Deborah's family trying to figure out what crops to grow now that tobacco isn't very profitable any more. As usual, I was grateful for the reminder facing page one about who all of Deborah's relatives are.

Ms. Maron also does a fine job with exploring the challenges that face modern farmers as they balance their natural desire to earn a profit with the important need to be a decent person. You'll find out about the role that prejudice can play in this regard as well.

As the book opens, someone is strewing body parts all over the county. Dwight keeps getting called out to investigate the next one. Will they ever find a whole corpse? Deborah is also troubled by defendants and litigants who don't seem to understand what they are supposed to do in the legal process.

You would think that a married couple would share enough pillow talk to make solving mysteries pretty easy, but that's not the case for this pair as ethical considerations often require keeping knowledge separate from one another. But Ms. Maron is a genius at developing plot complications that allow the correct information to get into the right hands.

The book is also filled with good humor, always kicked off by the friendly advice quoted in each chapter's opening from Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890. By using quite a few different narrators, you also are able to enjoy many perspectives on various characters and their actions, such as Reid's habits when it comes to umbrellas.

This is a very fine book. It would work well as a standalone if you haven't read any books in the series before. But I do recommend that you start in the beginning, rather than here. You have a treat ahead of you if you do.
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3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty plain, 31 Mar 2009
By johnverp (Budapest) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hard Row (Mass Market Paperback)
The story revolves around a husband and wife who both occupy positions on the right side of the law - Deborah is a judge and Dwight is a policeman.

We eventually have a murder after the discovery of some limbs, but it takes us a long time to get there. But it is only towards the end of the book that a plausible explanation for the murder surfaces and the matter is all wrapped up in a few pages. This only after Deborah accidentally discovers some of Dwight's papers and finds a helpful clue.

We have several references of little consequence to family situations, but there is little by way of characterisations. We also sit in on some court scenes, but none are of substance or related to any other threads in the story. The murder itself is all rather simply related.

I couldn't help get the feeling that Maron thought of a reasonable murder scenario and then used 300 pages of padding to take us there.

In short, not a book to truly exercise a reader's mind.

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