MARGARET MARON: R.I.P.

I woke up this morning to the sad news that Margaret Maron, mystery author, humanist, and friend, passed away yesterday. I enjoyed her Sigrid Harald books and, of course, her Deborah Knott series. I, also, loved spending time with Margaret at Malice Domestic and Bouchercon. She was always so friendly, including people in her panels and chats in the lobby, bar, or book room. When she finally made it to one of my Literary Salons here on the West Coast, she not only gave a great talk, but she identified a special spider that was spinning a web 'behind my garden gate.' Who knew she was an expert on arachnia? Margaret was a woman of many talents and interests. She was smart, witty, funny, compassionate, and generous to others. She was also a wonderdful storyteller, so it's not surprising that she won all the major mystery awards, including the Macavity. She was also a Grandmaster of Mystery Writers of America. Margaret was a literary treasure and one of the nicest people I've ever known. I will miss her.

Photo: I took this in 2013. Margaret, wearing an Egyptian motif scarf that Elizabeth Peters aka Barbara Mertz gave her.

Here's the obit that was in my inbox this morning (click to enlarge):

Ending a Series: Guest Post by Margaret Maron

Margaret Maron:
Ending a Series 

When Fugitive Colors, the 8th in my Sigrid Harald series, was published, I assumed that would be the last time I'd write about this NYPD homicide detective. There was an arc to her story and that arc had been completed.

Period. The end.

Or so I thought.

But then NC District Court Judge Deborah Knott and her deputy sheriff husband Dwight Bryant decided to have a belated honeymoon in New York and her new sister-in-law offered them the use of her Upper West Side apartment. Thus, Three-Day Town. Naturally, a body wound up in that apartment and who should come to investigate?

While Dwight and Sigrid worked well together, Sigrid and Deborah did not exactly bond, which rather amused me. I thought it would be fun to see how Sigrid reacted on Deborah's turf, so I brought her south in Buzzard Table. Again, she and Dwight were on the same page, but it was clear that she and Deborah were never going to become BFFs.

Nevertheless, rereading the series reminded me that I had indeed left some loose threads the first time around: unanswered questions about her artist lover's death, some early modern paintings hidden in an old historical house in lower Manhattan. Chronologically, Take Out comes after Fugitive Colors, but well before Three-Day Town. Subways still took tokens then, the Trade Towers still stood, and one could smoke in most restaurants.

Now I've tied off all those threads and this time, it really is the end.

At least I think it is, just as I think that Long Upon the Land is the last in my Deborah Knott series. I've said almost everything there is to say about her and her huge family. I don't want to start repeating myself and I'm more than ready to be done with deadlines. I began my career with short stories and that's how I plan to end it. (Two are currently in the queue at EQMM.) Life in the slow lane. I want to smell the gardenias and put a dent in the stack of books piled beside my favorite reading chair.

On the other hand . . .?

Deborah's first appearance was in a short story anthology that Sara Paretsky edited. She just walked into my head running her mouth and wouldn't shut up, so who knows if another character will do the same?

***

Margaret Maron is a founding member and third president of Sisters in Crime. Named a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America, she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2016. 

***

The Deborah Knott Series (20): 
▪ Bootlegger's Daughter, 1992 
▪ Southern Discomfort, 1993 
▪ Shooting at Loons, 1994 ▪ Up Jumps the Devil, 1996 
▪ Killer Market, 1997 
▪ Home Fires, 1998 
▪ Storm Track, 2000 
▪ Uncommon Clay, 2001 
▪ Slow Dollar, 2002 
▪ High Country Fall, 2004 
▪ Rituals of the Season, 2005 
▪ Winter’s Child, 2006 
▪ Hard Row, 2007 
▪ Death’s Half Acre, 2008

Margaret Maron Guest Post for Earth Day

With Earth Day approaching, I asked Mystery Author Margaret Maron for a guest post. Her Judge Deborah Knott series addresses many Environmental Issues.

Margaret Maron is the author of twenty-six novels and two collections of short stories. Winner of several major American awards for mysteries (Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity), her works are on the reading lists of various courses in contemporary Southern literature and have been translated into 16 languages. She has served as president of Sisters in Crime, the American Crime Writers League, and Mystery Writers of America.

MARGARET MARON:  
SHIITAKES, TUBEROSES AND OSTRICHES

Most of the books in my Judge Deborah Knott series have environmental issues at their heart. Whether it’s overdevelopment in the mountains (High Country Fall) or too many special interests pulling at our coastal waters (Shooting at Loons), these issues reflect her deep ties to the land. Up Jumps the Devil and Hard Row deal specifically with land use as her corner of North Carolina becomes more densely populated and urbanized.

In Up Jumps the Devil, Deborah talks about the lanes that crisscross the family’s farms: “They started out as real shortcuts, but these days my brothers shuttle equipment back and forth even when it might be quicker to use the road. They get a little tired of honking cars and getting the finger from impatient commuters. Urban people move to the country and it’s like, ‘Gee, you mean farmers live here? And they’re going to clutter up my road with hay balers and gang disks? Who the hell do these rednecks think they are?’ Pooling equipment’s the main reason Daddy and the boys are still able to make farming turn a decent living.”

Later, her father tells them that he’s struck a deal with the developer who’s building on the other side of their creek: “In exchange for access to the creek, he’s agreed to a buffer zone, so we don’t have to see and hear everything over there. . . If we agree to lay back a few hundred feet on this side and he lays back the same distance—”
“A greenbelt?” I asked.
“Huh?” said Robert.
“Like a park or a wilderness area,” I said. Instead of building right up to the creek, we’ll leave a wide strip of trees and bushes where people can walk or ride bicycles or have picnics.”
 It was just like down at the coast. I might not like to see our homeplace changing, but Daddy was right. Best we could hope for was to have a say in how it changed.

In Hard Row, the brothers call a family meeting to discuss new crops for the farm now that tobacco is being phased out. They discuss cotton, pick-your-own fruits, and shiitake mushrooms. Industrial hemp would be a great replacement crop had it first been called the paper weed. With a name like hemp though, our legislators are scared to death to permit it.

The grandchildren suggest raising ostriches since the meat has become trendy. Deborah’s sisters-in-law are appalled: “What kind of outlandish foolery is that?”
Emma wrinkled her pretty little nose. “One good thing about them—they don’t stink like hogs.”
“Yeah, but hogs is more natural,” said Isabel. “I’d be plumb embarrassed to tell folks we was raising ostriches.”

One of Deborah’s nephews said, “Don’t y’all think it’d be good if we switched over to something that doesn’t require tons of pesticides on every acre?”
“Everything’s got pests that you gotta poison,” said his father.
“Not if we went organic.”
“You young’uns act like we’re some sort of criminals ’cause we didn’t sit around and let the crops get eat up with worms and bugs and wilts and nematodes,” Haywood huffed. “Every time we find something that works, the government comes and takes it away.”
“Because it doesn’t really work,” said Bobby. “All we’re doing is breeding more resistant pests and endangering our own health.”

In the end, Deborah, Seth and their daddy decide to give the kids 25 acres so that they can start cleansing the land and go all natural. To Kezzie’s amusement, they are delighted to learn that he’s held on to an old manure spreader.

When Deborah asks him what he thinks of their plan to raise florist-quality tuberoses, the wily old ex-bootlegger just smiles. “Tell you what, shug. Flowers or mushrooms or even ostriches—it don’t matter one little bit. Anything that keeps ’em here on the farm another generation’s gonna be just fine with me.”
With responsible stewardship, the land will be fine, too.