Slow Dollar: 9 (Deborah Knott Mystery)

The multiple winner of the most coveted prizes for mystery fiction Margaret Maron has received immense acclaim for her highly popular Deborah Knott series. Now in Slow Dollar her ninth novel featuring the tough and quick-witted North Carolina judge a ragtag carnival comes to Colleton County--with murder as the main attraction.Opening night at the annual Harvest Festival carnival and the moonlit autumn evening has brought out half of Colleton County to ride the Tilt-O-Whirl and Ferris wheel throw quarters at Pollys Plate Pitch or toss ping-pong balls into bowls of live goldfish against a cacophony of music clacking machines and hucksterism. The air is sweetly redolent of hot grease fried dough grilled meats and spun sugar...and one whiff is all it takes to send Judge Deborah Knott straight back to her childhood holding her mothers hand riding on the shoulders of one of her eleven brothers or clinging to her daddys pants leg dazzled by the bright neon tubes and colorful chasing lights.Unfortunately all is not try-your-luck and stuffed prizes this year. Murder stalks the midway and when one gaffed game ends with a brutal death Deborah discovers more than a body.Hidden beneath the carnivals razzle-dazzle surface is a sordid reality of danger greed and dark secrets--devastating confidences that Deborah has kept concealed for almost twenty years. Now as family loyalties war with judicial obligations Deborah must struggle to win a carnys trust...before the killer pins a bulls-eye on yet another victim.