From the Publisher

"Judge Deborah Knott has agreed to "tie the knot" with childhood friend Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant, and her numerous relatives are acting as if it's the love match of the century. It's not, and suddenly Deborah's wondering whether friendship, mutual history, and good sex are enough to make a marriage. Her antidote for cold feet? She's heading for the hills." "When asked to fill in for a vacationing judge in Cedar Gap, a five-hour drive from her flatland home, Deborah readily agrees. It's the perfect place to clear her head with its fresh mountain air, gorgeous fall foliage, and tourists thicker than fleas on a blue tick hound." "But a prominent Cedar Gap doctor has been brutally murdered and Judge Knott arrives in time to hear the probable cause case against the young man who's been arrested. With enough evidence to go to trial, Deborah rules that the case can go forward...despite her reservations about his guilt." When a second prominent citizen takes a deadly fall, Deborah realizes that an undercurrent of malice runs through this postcard pretty town, where real estate prices are soaring and rich outsiders are replacing the locals amid the rolling hills. Soon, she's looking at Cedar Gap with critical eyes while giving an equally hard look at her relationship with Dwight. What she sees will rock her with a whole new theory about the murder case...and her impending marriage. Yet Deborah Knott had better take a look in her rearview mirror as well, or she could end up as another corpse in the High Country fall.

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

Deborah's narrative voice, with its engaging tone of amusement at the human foibles she witnesses in her travels, is just the ticket for this dramatic view of the spectacular Blue Ridge Mountains on the western border of the state -- and the quaint local custom of tossing one's enemies off these scenic slopes. Whenever she takes a breather from investigating the deaths of two real estate developers, Deborah takes the reader exactly where the reader wants to go, from turkey calls to down-home country musicales. Now, that's culture.

Publishers Weekly

The leaves of autumn are in full splendor, and so is Maron's talent in her 10th Deborah Knott adventure (after 2002's Slow Dollar). Asked to fill in for a vacationing judge up in the Blue Ridge high country, Deborah jumps at the chance to put some space between her and Colleton County detective Dwight Bryant, whose engagement ring has suddenly and almost inexplicably appeared on her finger. But Knott quickly finds that the serene appearance of Cedar Gap belies the troubles brewing beneath its surface. One man is dead before Deborah even arrives, and his accused killer, Daniel Freeman, is a friend of Deborah's nieces, who are sharing their parents' mountainside condo with Her Judgeship. Yet before heads or tails can be made of the current situation, Knott is present when an evening of pickin' and grinnin' ends with the disappearance of one of a newly formed trio of real estate developers. And her ride home with the stunningly handsome "Lucius the Luscious" Burke, the local DA, may just put an end to her quandary about getting hitched to Dwight. Her entire stay in Cedar Gap is fraught with dangers, romantic and otherwise, as Deborah finds herself pursued to the brink of death itself. The roadways aren't the only thing with hairpin turns in this gripping puzzler. Agent, Vicky Bijur. Mystery Guild Main Selection. (Aug. 24) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Judge Deborah's engagement to Deputy Sheriff Dwight has stirred a furor in her extended family, so she trades noise at home for the supposed quiet of court in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There, predictably, she becomes embroiled in a murder case with a wrongfully accused suspect. This rates a strong "buy." Maron lives in North Carolina. [See Mystery Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/04.] Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The problem with owning a fancy house on the edge of a mountain is the danger of tumbling down the side. Taking a breather from the hoopla surrounding her engagement to Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant, Deborah Knott scoots over to the exquisitely preserved (some would say preciously folksified) North Carolina mountain town of Cedar Gap to fill in for a vacationing judge, bunking for the week with her college-age twin cousins May and June, who have opted out of school to open a restaurant there. In Deborah's first case, their pal Danny is charged with killing their partner Carla Ledwig's dad, who disapproved of his daughter's marriage. Did Danny whack the gerontologist with a hammer and push him over the terrace, or had Dr. Ledwig fatally alienated Simon Proffitt, owner of the town's declasse tourist trap, the Trading Post? Come to mention it, Ledwig had recently argued with crusty developer Billy Ed, 75, and he was on the outs with his forgetful longtime best friend Norman Osborne too. But the culprit can't be Norman, who's exonerated when he's whacked and dumped over the terrace at a fiddlin' party at Billy and Joyce Ashe's. A shade too much gooey romantic stuff, but like all the other members of the Knott tribe (Slow Dollar, 2002, etc.), those twins are irrepressible, and Deborah is nearly as good at bluegrass jamming as at judging. Agent: Vicky Bijur/Vicky Bijur Literary Agency

Product Details

• ISBN: 0446615900
  
• ISBN-13: 9780446615907
• Format: Mass Market Paperback, 320pp
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Pub. Date: August 2005
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 56,015
• Series: Deborah Knott Series, #10

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

High Country Fall

Mysterious Press

Chapter One

The trouble with making a public announcement is that the public-in this case, my family-feels entitled to respond. Not only to respond, but to exclaim, to criticize, and, above all, to offer comments and advice. The tom-toms, the grapevine, and yes, the Internet, too, were all working overtime.

From my four brothers who live out of state, to the other seven and their spouses still here in eastern North Carolina-not to mention a slew of aunts, uncles, and cousins all up and down the Atlantic seaboard-half the country seemed to be showering advice on my head.

Real showers, as well.

Bridal showers.

It was early October, three days after I'd begun wearing the ring that once belonged to Dwight Bryant's grandmother; two days after we'd told a couple of friends and both our families that we were planning a Christmas wedding.

I'm a district court judge here in Colleton County. Dwight is Sheriff Bo Poole's right hand and head of Bo's detective division, someone who's known me since the day Daddy piled all the boys who happened to be in the yard at the time into the back of his pickup and hauled them over to the hospital to meet their new sister. Dwight's always thought that gave him the right to act like one of my brothers, too. One of my bossy brothers.

We've both been married and divorced and-

Well, his marriage ended in divorce. Mine was merely annulled. (It was years before I learned that Daddy could have saved on lawyer's fees since I'd inadvertently married a hound dog who was already legally married at the time.) Dwight has a little boy up in Virginia; I sublimate with a bunch of nieces and nephews.

I had sworn off men at the beginning of summer, and after yet another relationship went sour on him, too, Dwight proposed that we quit looking for nonexistent soul mates and turn our solid friendship into marriage. That was less than two weeks ago and it seemed like a good idea at first, especially since it turned out that we were surprisingly solid in bed.

With all the hoopla after we announced it, though, I was starting to have second thoughts.

My family's so crazy about Dwight that you'd have thought someone had handed me a cool ten million and it was their duty to help me invest it before I threw it all on the nearest bonfire.

Take Aunt Sister, who about hugged the breath out of me the first time she saw me after hearing the news. "Thank God in glory! I thought you won't never going to settle down before I died." She looked at me dubiously. "You do aim to settle down, don't you?", which I think is a little sanctimonious for a woman who spends four months a year on the road in a Winnebago now that Uncle Rufus is retired.

Then there's Nadine, my brother Herman's wife, who belongs to a strict fundamentalist church and has never quite approved of me. "Of course, you can't wear white, but there're lots of pretty dresses in off-white."

"Oh, nobody worries about stuff like that anymore," said April, my brother Andrew's third-time-lucky try at marriage.

Aunt Zell, my mother's sister, couldn't stop beaming. "Now I know you have Sue's silver, crystal, and china," she said, "so why don't I give you a linen shower?"

"And I'll do lingerie," said Portland Brewer, my best friend and prospective matron of honor despite her advancing pregnancy. (Some of my brothers were making book on whether or not she'd deliver before the wedding.) "Black satin teddies. Red silk panties!"

"Kitchen goods!" said Mae and Doris.

"Well, what about ol' Dwight?" said their husbands. "Maybe we oughta give him a tool shower."

"So romantic," sighed my nieces. "All these years of catting around with other guys, then bang!" They had taken to singing parodies of "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" every time they saw me.

Maidie, Daddy's longtime housekeeper, was writing out family recipes for my edification and Dwight's well-being; while John Claude Lee and Reid Stephenson, my cousins and former law partners, were talking about a formal announcement dance at the Colleton County Country Club in Dobbs.

Dwight's mother, his two sisters, and his sister-in-law had already booked a luncheon date at the University Club in Raleigh for all the women in both families.

Even Daddy. He didn't say much, but his blue eyes twinkled whenever someone mentioned the wedding.

Dwight just laughed and took it all in stride.

I was starting to freak.

"They act like this is the love match of the century instead of a sensible arrangement," I told Minnie.

Minnie is married to my brother Seth. She's also my campaign manager. It was Minnie who advised me that it would be politically expedient to quit looking for the moon and settle down with someone respectably earthbound instead. She was surprised as hell that I'd taken her advice and as pleased as the rest that the someone turned out to be Dwight Bryant.

"Won't hurt you at the polls to be married to a well-regarded deputy sheriff like Dwight," she said, but when she started cooing like our nieces, I immediately disillusioned her.

"Romantic love has nothing to do with this," I told her. "It's pure pragmatism. Sure, we're fond of each other, but it's love based on friendship and mutual history, not romance. He's as tired of channel surfing as I am, so it just makes sense."

"Oh, honey," Minnie said, looking bereft. "No real passion?"

"I didn't say there was no passion," I told her, unable to repress a grin.

"Well, thank goodness for that much," she said, smiling back.

"But it's turning into a three-ring circus. Even at the courthouse. Clerks go out of their way to stop me in the halls and tell me how nice Dwight is. Like he's got a halo and they don't think I'm good enough for him. It's bad enough that Aunt Sister and Nadine and Doris think like that, I don't need it at work, too. Paul Archdale even had the nerve to ask me if I was letting personal considerations color my judgment when Dwight testified against his client this afternoon."

"Were you?"

"Of course not," I huffed. "Paul knows his client's guilty as sin. He was just trying to get a lighter sentence. I may be thinking about marrying Dwight, but that doesn't mean I've quit thinking."

"Dwight's ring on your finger means you're more than just thinking about it," Minnie said gently.

We both glanced down at the ring, an old-fashioned square-cut diamond flanked by two smaller stones. I pulled it off and balanced it on the palm of my hand, where it gleamed and shot out sparks of color in the sunshine.

"I don't know, Minnie. I'm beginning to think this marriage is going to cause more problems than it'll solve."

"No, it won't," she soothed. "You and Dwight will be good for each other, and it would embarrass him to death if you back out now, so you put that ring right back on your finger where it belongs. A lot of people care about both of you, so the two of y'all getting together's bound to be a nine-days' wonder. They'll settle down once they get used to the idea."

"Another week?" I asked glumly. "I don't know if I can take it."

Happily, I didn't have to.

That very evening, there was a message from Roger Longmire, Chief District Court Judge in our district. When I returned his call, he said, "Got anything sensitive or pressing on your calendar?"

"Not that I know of," I told him.

"Good. I've been asked if I could spare someone to hold court up in Cedar Gap."

"Here am I, Lord, send me," I said prayerfully. Cedar Gap is 'way the other side of the state, a good five- or six-hour drive from Colleton County.

Longmire snorted. He knows the Bible even better than I do. "When did you turn into Isaiah?"

"The minute you offered me a legitimate reason to head for the hills."

"Getting a little hot for you down here in the flatlands?"

Was that a chuckle in his voice? I considered for a moment. "Minnie called you, didn't she?"

"Good woman, your sister-in-law," he said blandly. "I owe her a lot. Did you know she was head of the Colleton County Democratic Women the first year I ran for the bench?"

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from High Country Fall by Margaret Maron Copyright © 2004 by Margaret Maron . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---