SAND SHARKS. By Margaret Maron. Grand Central. 291 pages. $24.99.
You might know that when Judge Deborah Knott heads to the coast for a professional conference, things are going to get interesting -- and deadly.
Most of Margaret Maron's 14 previous novels about Deborah Knott are set primarily in Colleton County, the fictional county where the judge presides in district court. Colleton County is a lot like Maron's real home, Johnston County, and along with their good mystery tales, the novels provide insight into what happens as development spreads across this once-rural area south and east of Raleigh.
Every now and then, however, readers get a change of well-described scenery when Deborah holds court in another county. This time, however, she's off to Wrightsville Beach and nearby Wilmington for the annual summer gathering of North Carolina's district-court judges.
The conference also offers Deborah some welcome time away from her new roles as wife to Deputy Dwight Bryant and stepmother to his 9-year-old son, who came to live with them after the death of his mother.
As soon as she arrives at the beach, it becomes apparent that during the years before she and Dwight got seriously involved, Deborah had some lively times at these annual judicial gatherings. It also becomes apparent that the phrase "sober as a judge" is a contradiction in terms, at least during conference week.
It is, in fact, while bending over the railing of the Riverwalk in Wilmington to relieve herself of the margaritas and crabs she shouldn't have mixed at dinner that first night that Deborah makes a grisly discovery. One of her fellow judges -- one who had been having dinner at a nearby table out on the deck -- is bobbing on the river's tide amid driftwood and trash, very dead.
Deborah, of course, can't resist making a few inquiries into the case, especially after another judge, a distinguished older gentleman who has announced his retirement, is nearly killed when he's run down by a car. Because the older judge had no known enemies, the assumption is that he was attacked because of something he saw the night of the murder.
The murder victim is another case altogether. He was an obnoxious person and not a particularly conscientious judge. There are plenty of suspects in his death, including some Deborah would rather not think of in that light.
The mystery is a good puzzle, and the suspense and danger mount. There's also a lot of fun in Maron's depiction of the social shenanigans of the supposedly staid judges, and anyone familiar with Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington will enjoy her eye for detail and deft descriptions. Throw in a little drama in the good judge's own domestic life, and you have the makings of a fine vacation book. If you've already been to the beach, go again, and take Sand Sharks with you.
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