Sam Knowles, renowned as a wood sculptor, is deaf. When his fiancee is found bludgeoned to death, Sam retreats into a silent world of his own, refusing to open up to investigators or to family and friends, even after he is charged with murder.
His brother, therapist Caleb Knowles, doesn’t give up and undertakes an investigation of his own after he becomes convinced the police will not search for the real killer. His search takes him into the work of the murder victim, who was auditor for a private accounting firm.
Caleb soon finds a suspicious link between an audit problem and one of his own therapy patients. The situation grows increasingly sticky, as Caleb struggles to keep his investigation separate from the required confidentiality of his profession.
Carla Damron has created an interesting setting for her murder mystery and has developed a believable cast of characters. Unfortunately, I figured out the murderer about halfway through her book. Nevertheless, this is a good beginning for a first novel.
Of interest is the South Carolina setting, with a short trek into North Carolina.
A licensed independent social worker, Damron has written short stories and co-authored one nonfiction work. She and her husband live in South Carolina with two dogs and a cat.
Murder@Maggody.com
By Joan Hess
Pocket Star Books, 2001, $6.99.
This paperback reprint of the latest Arly Hanks murder mystery is made for the computer illiterate, especially those who are suspicious of computers, fearing that the industry has produced a technology that will steal our souls and sell out to mysterious beings in another world.
And the computer buff will probably get a kick out of this tale as well.
Arly Hanks is chief of police in Maggody, Ark., a small town that apparently has barely made it into the 20th century, much less the 21st.
The murder, occurring late in this volume, is very real, but the introduction of computers is more spoof than reality.
In fact, the reader takes on the Hanks mysteries as much for the comedy as for the plot. At times the humor is heavy-handed, but the tongue-in-cheek picture of a small Arkansas town, complete with clannishness and busybodies, is hard to resist.
Arly must contend with her mother, who keeps tabs on her every move, and her equally mischievous beautician friend.
The people of Maggody definitely are suspicious when a young man offers to teach computer classes to adults. They fear corruption through pornography on the Internet, for one thing. And one trembling student fears that she will be besieged by stormtroopers because she has committed “an illegal operation.”
Then along comes an unmarried mother who must stay in the home of an aunt and uncle, both religious fanatics, until she serves out her probation time. Nothing supposedly happens in Maggody, but staying “good” there turns out to be very difficult.
Joan Hess, who lives in Arkansas, is a former president of the American Crime Writers League and is now president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance. She has received the American Mystery Award, the Agatha Award, the Drood Review Readers’ Award and the Macavity Award.
