 |
- Mystery - |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Storm Track |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Storm Track byMargaret Maron Warner Books (Mysterious Press) 260 pages, 2000 ISBN 0892966564 Reviewed by Nancy Mehl Eleven year old Stan Freeman is working on his sixth grade science project. He’s tracking hurricanes and halfway hoping that something spectacular will happen to help his grade. A couple of storms threaten and then die. But another is brewing. Hurricane Fran is bearing down on Colleton County, North Carolina with a vengeance. However, a much more dangerous storm is brewing in the twisted soul of a killer, not as easily seen, but much more deadly. And the lives of residents in the small town of Cotton Grove are directly in his lethal path. Judge Deborah Knott’s mind is centered on possible romantic problems. Fran is secondary – until the body of Lynn Bullock, the promiscuous wife of a local attorney, is found in a seedy motel. Then murder becomes Judge Knott’s primary concern. As she tries to narrow down the suspects, the rage of the killer and the fury of the hurricane increase together, building to a storm that will bring far more destruction than she could possibly anticipate. Storm Track is my first foray into the writings of Margaret Maron and it won’t be my last. Maron’s writing style and characters are superb. This plot was engrossing - although as a reader who likes to figure out who the murderer is before it is revealed, I was a little disappointed in a literary red herring thrown into the story line. It didn’t keep me from the correct conclusion, but forced me into a different direction for the method used by the killer. After finishing the novel, I re-read a section of a certain chapter to understand how I was deceived. It left me feeling as if I’d been misdirected in a rather under-handed way. Still, this problem doesn’t detract from a novel that is hard to put down and easy to pick up again. Maron is a master storyteller who has forced me to get to my local bookstore in search of her other novels. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||