Beware of Spoilers in Reviews about This Satisfying Mystery
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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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