Maron's WINTER’S CHILD (2006) Presents a Major Change in Growth in the Life of Judge Deborah Knott.

Reading Margaret Maron’s twelfth offering in her Judge Deborah Knott series, WINTER’S CHILD⎯a title that was somehow missed when it was published back in 2006⎯ reminded me of discussions about the manner in which readers say they want to see growth on the part of a main character.

Judge Deborah Knott and Dwight Bryant, the chief deputy in Colleton County, N. C., have been married for only a month at the beginning of WINTER’S CHILD. Dwight is involved in the investigation of the shooting death of a local ne’er-do-well when he gets a call from his son who lives with Dwight’s ex-wife in Shaysville, Virginia, a couple hours drive north.

Dwight learns, after arriving in Shaysville, that his ex-wife is missing. Then his son disappears. The ex-wife is found dead, an obviously faked suicide, but the son remains missing. While trying to unravel the mystery in Shaysville, Dwight is still devoting time and guidance to those investigating the shooting death back in Colleton County. When Deborah hears what has happened, she takes a leave of absence from her judicial duties to be with her new husband.

In addition to gaining deeper insight into her husband’s background after arriving in Shaysville, she learns she will be the mother, albeit the stepmother to an eight-year-old boy, when Dwight’s son is found, drugged and scared, but otherwise unharmed. From this point in the story, there are subtle, but major changes in the way Margaret Maron presents her main character.

Among the things that define the difference between being a girl and a woman, is accepting the combined responsibilities of being a wife and a mother. While some might want to boil The Old Cobbler in oil for expressing such a thought, it is, in my opinion, the reason for the change in the manner in which Margaret presents her main character.

However one wishes to explain it, in WINTER’S CHILD, Judge Deborah Knott goes through a major change in her life. Margaret Maron does a masterful job with depicting this change. The writing is, at times, spine tingling scary. In other places, it alternates between tugging at and warming the heart. But most importantly, the writing never becomes bathetic.

This led to a look back over the series to 1992,the time when it all began. In BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER, Margaret Maron introduced readers to Deborah Knott, a small-town, unwed lawyer, taking on the good old boys by running for judge.

Deborah Knot joined two other main characters that were already established on the literary scene in 1992. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone demonstrated her continuing mastery of the alphabet with the release of I for INNOCENT. That same year, Sara Paretsky’s sixth novel in her V.I. Warshawski series, BURN MARKS, was published.

One book reviewer at the time called Deborah a sassy new heroine. Another said she was North Carolina’s answer to Paretsky’s Warshawski, which is an interesting comparison. Paretsky has said, “V I grew up under the shadow of the old steel mills.” It can be said that Deborah grew up under the shadow of the old copper stills.

When introduced to the reading world, Deborah Knott still had a few loose ends in her personal life that needed to be tidied up. We learned enough early on about her younger years to say that in one sense she was Colleton County’s answer to the TV show, “Sex and the City.”

Even as a Judge, Deborah Knott still had a few personal issues that remained unsolved, but her position in the Cotton Grove community grew as she gave her voice to public issues such as shelter for battered women, and the burning of churches.

After the quantum leap taken in WINTER’S SON, the character appears to be more focused in Margaret Maron’s next two books, HARD ROW (2007) and DEATH’S HALF ACRE (2008). Judge Knott still deals with community issues, while growing in her role as wife and mother.

A statically count was not done, but it seems there are fewer “dialogues” between the characters that ride along on Deborah’s shoulder, the preacher and his sidekick that represent her inner debates about the issues she faces. The Judge seems to be more certain in her decisions as to what should be done.

To my way of thinking, Margaret Maron’s fourteen books to date in the Deborah Knott series is a text-book example of how an author can show the growth and maturity of a main character while remaining true to the place and people that first led readers to fall in love with the character and the series.

The fifteenth book in the series, SAND SHARKS, is still weeks away from its August release. With it, we will have traveled with Deborah Knott from mountains in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, but always following the highways and back roads of North Carolina. As Phil Harris, Bing Crosby and others once sang, “Nothing could be finer….”