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list at Patti Abbott’s blog.
BOOTLEGGER’S
DAUGHTER (1992) by Margaret Maron
Reviewed
by Barry Ergang
In
my teens I discovered Ross Macdonald, an author whom I instantly admired and whose
works I began accumulating. Among them
was The Wycherly Woman. But after
starting to read it, I quit after three or four chapters, thinking it a work atypically
and unaccountably dull from this author, but also figuring that I’d give it
another shot sometime in the future. The
future was about a year or so later. That time around the novel proved as irresistible
as Macdonald’s previous Lew Archer stories long and short had been, and I
devoured it. The experience made me realize that mood and expectation almost
invariably determine how I respond to reading matter. I’m guessing that many
other readers, likely a majority, react the same way, whether to leisure or
required material.
“Okay,
but this isn’t a review of The Wycherly
Woman,” you say; “it concerns Bootlegger’s
Daughter. What’s the connection?”
Bootlegger’s Daughter is the first in a series of mystery novels starring
first-person narrator Deborah Knott, the partner of a small law firm in the
town of Dobbs, North Carolina, located in the fictional county of Colleton. The
book was enthusiastically recommended to me years ago by a former college
English instructor who at one point worked for a used-book store and who knew
I’m a mystery fan. I bought a paperback copy but, until just recently as of
this writing (early August 2017), it languished on a shelf.
The
novel’s basic premise concerns Deborah Knott being approached by
eighteen-year-old Gayle Whitehead, for whom she babysat when Gayle was a child,
and asked to look into the brutal murder of Gayle’s mother Janie when Gayle
was three months old. My problem with it is that although this request occurs
fairly early in the story, it isn’t until halfway or a little further through
that Deborah’s investigation really begins. In between she’s campaigning for a
local judgeship. Amid descriptions of her activities at various political
rallies, the reader is introduced to a number of personalities who are
competing for the same position as well as to various residents of Dobbs and
surrounding communities, relatively few of whom have anything to do with the
mystery. This is a novel which could benefit from a cast-of-characters list,
one confined to people essential to the crux of the story.
Just
prior to Chapter Nine, I debated about whether to continue reading or quit. As
this review makes obvious, I kept going, which led to a satisfying, albeit
somewhat predictable conclusion, though the trip was a bit more sluggish than
I’d have liked. But that’s where mood and expectation come into play. I was in
the mood for a novel in which the detection element was predominant, and my
expectation was that Bootlegger’s
Daughter would deliver one longer than that in a novelette.
The
first four pages of the Warner Books/Mysterious Press paperback edition contain
brief enthusiastic excerpts from a multitude of newspaper and author blurbs, and
other reviews. Several of them praise the novel by alluding to authors like Faulkner,
Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee, as well as to mystery writers P.D.
James, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton. I must reluctantly admit to not having
read the mystery writers. As far as the others are concerned, I can sort of
understand why reviewers mentioned
them, but based on this work I wouldn’t put Margaret Maron in quite the same
league. Nevertheless, she does a very good job of conveying a sense of character,
place, and cultural climate in lucid prose.
With
the admonition that there are a few (and I mean only a few) instances of the N-word and the F-bomb, which might discourage
some from reading it, I can recommend Bootlegger’s
Daughter to those expecting and
being in the mood for a tale which combines modern realistic mystery with a
mainstream/literary approach.
©
2017 Barry Ergang
Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work is available at Amazon and Smashwords.com
Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work is available at Amazon and Smashwords.com
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3 comments:
This one has been languishing on my shelves ever since it first appeared in French, that is, around 1997-98. I started it several times, never to go past the first two chapters, which left me puzzled as the book came up with a strong reputation (the blurb proudly proclaimed that it was the first novel ever to win all four major American mystery awards) French critics were less enthused, which I attributed to their hardboiled bias, but Barry's review makes it appear like they were the ones in the right for once.
Men! I suppose you guys don't acknowledge LITTLE WOMEN as the Great American Novel either (along with HUCKLEBERRY FINN, of course). To those of us who find a puzzle more interesting when it's embedded in a character-driven novel, THE BOOTLEGGER'S DAUGHTER is not only the engaging first of an absorbing series with a richly developed character and story arc, but hardly "forgotten"--we are still reading and rereading the entire series and recommending it to our friends. Oh, well. We already know that everybody's taste in books is different. ;)
As I said, Xavier, it's not a terrible book by any means, just one you really need to be in the mood for and know what to expect in terms of its approach.
Really, Liz? Gender-shaming? Tsk, tsk! ;-)
I love Huck Finn but have never read Little Women. Nevertheless, I have read and greatly enjoyed many character-driven mysteries by both women and men. Authors like Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Margaret Millar, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Jenny Milchman, and Patricia Abbott, among many others, come to mind. I recently read a couple of comical crime novels by Joan Hess and George Baxt which are filled with, and driven by, quirky characters.
My problem with Bootlegger's Daughter is not that it's character-driven--I generally prefer that kind of story, whether mystery or other--but that its mystery core is novelette-length at most and doesn't feel well-integrated into the narrative's cultural aspects. Which is to say, too much of what accompanies the mystery seems like tacked-on filler, some of which bored me, more of which was involving--but which I wasn't necessarily wanting or expecting. Give me points for finishing the book--and for the participles in this and the previous sentence.
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