The Buzzard Table

August 20, 2012
In Maron's intriguing 18th Deborah Knott mystery, the North Carolina judge teams with the author's other series lead, NYPD homicide detective Sigrid Harald, as she did in 2011's Agatha-winning Three-Day Town. When Sigrid and her mother, photojournalist Anne Lattimore Harald, travel to Cotton Grove, N.C., to visit Sigrid's ailing grandmother, Deborah enlists Anne to help a young photographer, Jeremy Harper, who has been sentenced for trespassing after he attempted to photograph CIA "rendition flights" from the Colleton County airstrip. Meanwhile, the disappearance of promiscuous realtor Rebecca Jowett, the strange activities of British ornithologist Martin Crawford (who's studying turkey vultures), and the murder of a pilot staying at a local hotel provide plenty of investigative grist for Deborah's police officer husband, Dwight Bryant, as well as for Sigrid. Maron successfully combines a look at family foibles and relationships with a series of moral choices that challenge the characters' sense of law and justice. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary.

Judge Deborah Knott fans need not be alarmed that this mystery opens far from her central North Carolina home. Eventually, the terrorist and murder plots unravel in familiar Colleton County. It's disappointing that narrator C.J. Critt doesn't depict Deborah with a Southern accent, nor does the tone she uses for Deborah's husband, Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant, ring true. Critt redeems herself, however, with winning vocalizations of some of the minor characters. Her reading is strong enough to carry the listener through as Deborah and Dwight piece together clues to solve two murders, one attempted killing, suspicious flights at the local airport, and the question of how buzzards play into the mayhem. In a nice touch, Maron introduces each chapter with trivia from the Turkey Vulture Society. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine