Deborah Knott mystery

Max Weston, twenty-one and a newly commissioned lance corporal, leaves home for his first posting in central Africa. Fiercely patriotic and completely at home in the army, he is eager to make a difference. He never comes back. His parents Caroline and Andrew are devastated by the death of their only child. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her son is now matched by the intensity of her loss, and as she is borne away on a private ocean of grief the moorings of their marriage begin to come loose. The silence is broken by the arrival of Andrew's mother, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. Caroline has never felt good enough for this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady and has lived for years in fear of putting a foot wrong. Now, suddenly, Caroline has the upper hand. As Elsa lies, marooned and disorientated, in the spare room, the past unspools in her mind, throwing up fragments of her anxious childhood in 1920s Richmond - under the shadow of her father, a soldier who came back from the Great War a different man. A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war, Home Fires explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class and the long road to redemption.

"It's Christmas in rural North Carolina's Colleton County. Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant and his wife, Judge Deborah Knott, have propped his traditional pine tree in the living room. Christmas lights have been hung. Aunt Zell's famous fruitcake has arrived. Deborah can't wait to celebrate with Dwight, her stepson Cal, and all of her colorful relatives. Then a tragic car wreck casts a dark cloud over the revelry. A beautiful young cheerleader dies in the crash, and her community is devastated. But Dwight soon learns that the girl's death wasn't a simple accident. And more lives may be lost before Christmas Eve unless Deborah and Dwight find the killer - or killers"--Page 2 of cover.

With friends and family over-reacting to her announcement that she plans to marry Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, Judge Deborah Knott gratefully seizes the opportunity to put a five-hour drive between herself and Colleton County when the Chief District Court Judge offers her a week on the bench in Cedar Gap. It is early autumn, leaves are turning, and summer residents are preparing to close up their mountain "cabins" (palatial houses perched atop the most desirable locations) and return to their winter homes in Florida. But Deborah's peaceful break is disrupted when one Floridian is found murdered. He won't be going home, and Deborah won't be either - until she tracks down the killer.