Audiobook8 hours
Up Jumps the Devil
Written by Margaret Maron
Narrated by C. J. Critt
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Best-selling author Margaret Maron's colorful Deborah Knott mysteries crackle with sassy Southern dialogue and rural wisdom. In Up Jumps the Devil, fast-moving progress is threatening to forever destroy the leisurely, heart-warming pace of Colleton County, North Carolina. District court judge Deborah Knott sees trouble brewing when plans for a new interstate highway start pushing up property values. As her own relatives battle lifelong neighbors over selling farmland or holding out, Deborah finds herself calming the combatants with down-home wit-and sometimes, judicial decisions. But when the squabbles escalate to murder, Deborah is forced to search for the killer uncomfortably close to home. Margaret Maron skillfully draws on her North Carolina roots to pen her well-crafted, suspenseful mysteries. Her creative talents have earned her the coveted Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Awards. Salt-of-the-earth characters, vivid with lilting, down-home humor and unwavering opinions, step from the pages when narrator C.J. Critt breathes life into them.
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Bootlegger's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Southern Discomfort Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home Fires Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncommon Clay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Up Jumps the Devil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slow Dollar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shooting at Loons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killer Market Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storm Track Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5High Country Fall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winter's Child Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rituals of the Season Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hard Row Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death's Half Acre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Christmas Mourning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sand Sharks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three-Day Town Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Buzzard Table Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Up Jumps the Devil
Rating: 3.723484768939394 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
132 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was not one of my favorite Deborah Knott books. It is all about land, the selling and development of the land. The book does give a lot of information about all of Deborah's many brothers, a few sisters-in-law and some of her nieces and nephews.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Back for her fourth leisurely outing, North Carolina judge Deborah Knott (Shooting at Loons, 1994, etc.) has personal connections to just about every suspect in the murder of old Jap Stancil--a failed farmer who's been eking out a living working on cars and growing ornamental corn for the Thanksgiving season. Suspect #1 is Jap's roguish, layabout nephew Allen, whom Deborah idiotically eloped with when she was an unstable 18-year-old college freshman (the marriage was almost instantly annulled). Worse yet, Deborah's land-proud father and some of her 11 brothers- -all of whom own property adjacent to the Stancil farm--had strong feelings (ranging from outrage to greed) about Jap's plan to sell out to a local developer. And Deborah also has a soft spot for Billy Wall, a hard-working kid with a very pregnant wife, who just might have killed Jap for his corn money. Deborah
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Series stays interesting, as we learn more about Deborah's family and early life. Conflicts about land are generated by strong investment interest from developers and, murder results. A face to face confrontation puts her in danger before the case is resolved. Another well told story from North Carolina.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Synopsis: It's near Thanksgiving and most of the family is in the area. A land developer is trying to buy up all of the farms in the area to turn them into a housing development. One of the brothers needs money badly enough that he sells his property. One of the small farm owners is killed, as is the land developer. Review: This book is all over the place. Parts are good and parts are completely irrelevant. The grand reveal is pitiful.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There's such a sense of family in these novels, and even more amazing is that it's not just in one or two books of the series, but throughout every single one.Up Jumps the Devil is a book more about the past than the previous three in the series. We get to meet Allen Stencil, who has a history with Deb. And we also get to meet some more of Kezzie Knott's neighbors.The mystery is all about land and how it's inherited when people die. And a couple of people definitely die in this book. As usual, the murders also somehow wind up touching Deb and her very extended family.It still got confused here and there because there were what seemed like hundreds (okay only a few dozen) of new Knott (and Knott affiliated) family members.Kidd was still there, as was Dwight, and there was even a little bit of strife between Kidd and Deb, which was interesting. A little bit of strife is always interesting.It's not the most involved and complicated mystery Maron's written, but all the family drama and action more than made up for the thinner than usual plot.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judge Deborah Knott and her wide-spread and very numerous family members are in fine form in this addition to the Knott mysteries.
I'm glad I don't have to try and keep track of all of the family members, it doesn't bother me if I don't remember which son of which brother this nephew is - and I figure if it really matters the Margaret Maron will tell me!
This story involves a brother from California, a good friend of "Daddy" Kezzie and a host of other relatives on the sidelines. Land, its cost, its potential for development and greed are at the heart of the story and since the Knott family has hundreds of acres between them it is a touchy issue, especially when people start turning up dead!
Still enjoying this series so will be continuing to read it. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm a huge fan of Maron's Debra Knott series, and I'm trying to backfill the ones I've skipped over the years. This one is so "old" I got it on cassette tapes - we did find an old walkman that still works, and I listened to this one this weekend while I worked on some needlepoint. Keeping up with the 11 brothers and a town full of cousins adds to the fun while Debra tries not to get involved in solving murders. Great southern setting, fun characters, and a better than average story...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great Deborah Knott Mystery book!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Her best Deborah Knott book. Brings Piedmont North Carolina to life.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/54th in the Judge Deborah Knott series, set in North Carolina.Maron usually manages to weave a socially relevant them into her plots; in this installment, it’s the turning over of farmland in the rural south for development to accommodate the hordes leaving the Northeast and the Midwest:“Sometimes I wonder how places like Iowa or Ohio or upstate New York still have enough people to make it worthwhile keeping the lights on up there.”Fans know from previous books that Deborah has in her past a brief unhappy marriage that she dislikes thinking about, never mind discussing. In this book, we learn all about that rash marriage to Allen Stancel, two of whose family wind up getting themselves murdered as the story goes on.In the previous book, Deborah started an affair with Kidd Chapin, a North Carolina wild life officer; that affair continues in the book, as do the lives of her 11 brothers, sisters-in-law, and countless nieces and nephews. As usual, there’s plenty of humor, not the least of which is the story of how one of her nephews tries to claim an 8 point buck deer for his own and the hilarious consequences of that act.What makes these stories so good, makes the stand out from the rest of the pack, is the inclusion of the kind of cases that a judge in North Carolina’s district Court system must face. DUIs, fights, domestic violence, child abuse—they’re all there, and Deborah’s point of view makes for absorbing reading. It’s all of one piece, whether she’s presiding in court, at a family gathering, or nearly caught by a murderer out to eliminate witnesses. And all told with an easy language style that quite accurately portrays both the language and the living style of her rural North Carolina home.Another excellent installment in a top-notch series.