Tag Archives: Politics

by | August 1, 2009 · 10:52 am

Tom Wicker. The Devil Must. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.

Just outside of Marion (a town that might be Lumberton, Hamlet, or Rockingham), a farmer is murdered.  A young African American man is accused of the killing, but newspaperman Sandy Martin thinks he is innocent. The murder itself is gruesome, but what Martin uncovers during his investigation is worse: political corruption, personal betrayals, witchcraft. This is a dark picture of a small southern town in the last days of one party rule and Jim Crow.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1950-1959, 1957, Coastal Plain, Mystery, Wicker, Tom

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by | June 12, 2009 · 4:29 pm

Michael Malone. First Lady. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2001.

When a pair of teenagers found the body of a young woman in the woods on the north side of the Piedmont town of Hillston, there was a tag was affixed to her foot. The tag was addressed to Lt. Justin Saville and asked him to deliver the body to his friend, Chief of Police Cuddy Magnum. It is now several months later and the two policemen have not only failed to find the killer–nicknamed the Guess Who killer by the media–but they have also failed to determine the identity of the woman. Justin and Cuddy face media and community pressure to solve the case, but other complications arise, including the appearance a famous Irish rock star in town, the interference of crooked politicians, and several other murders. This is the third book in the Justin and Cuddy series of mysteries.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2001, Malone, Michael, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont

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by | June 1, 2009 · 3:28 pm

Joanna Catherine Scott. Child of the South. New York: Berkley Books, 2009.

Child of the South continues the story started in The Road from Chapel Hill. The War has ended, but Eugenia, Tom, and Clyde all face substantial hardships. Eugenia travels to Wilmington, where she lives with family and searches for the truth about her past and her mother. She also meets and becomes friends with Abraham Galloway, the former Union spy who is a charismatic leader and one of the new African American state Senators in Raleigh. Back in Chapel Hill, Clyde–who was crippled fighting for the Union–struggles to keep his farm afloat and his family alive. Ironically, the former fugitive-slave hunter is helped in this endeavor by Tom, the ex-slave who was given his freedom by Eugenia and at one point captured by Clyde.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Orange, Piedmont, Scott, Joanna Catherine

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by | April 28, 2009 · 1:54 pm

Margaret Maron. Southern Discomfort. New York : Mysterious Press, 1993.

When she was running for the open district judge position in Colleton County, Deborah Knott commented to a meeting of the local WomanAid group that she wished she could take time out of campaigning to help with their work.  Now that she has been appointed to the seat, the group has come to claim her weekends and she starts working with a group of women building a house for a needy single mom and her kids.  On top of her new duties and the construction project, the new judge also faces violence in her community and in her family.  Before the house is finished, the group’s electrician (who also happens to be Deborah’s niece) is attacked, the accused attacker is found dead, and the girl’s father is poisoned.  This is the second in the series of Judge Deborah Knott mysteries.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1993, Coastal Plain, Maron, Margaret, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | April 3, 2009 · 10:56 am

Mac Sherman Harris. Leaving Levittown. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2000.

The town of South Shore in fictional Walter County has a growing population of transplanted Northerners who headed south to retire and this has created significant tension between the newcomers and their neighbors. After a newly elected state senator is killed by a sniper while golfing, two local detectives become frustrated by a lack of evidence in the case. The victim’s widow is a suspect, as is a local man who hates all the town’s northerners, but both claim to be innocent. The waters are muddied even further as information about the victim’s past begins to surface.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000, 2000-2009, Coast, Harris, Mac Sherman, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | March 24, 2009 · 10:19 am

Michael Malone. Time’s Witness. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.

Time’s Witness is narrated by Cuddy Mangum, formerly a homocide detective and now the Chief of Police for the Piedmont town of Hillston. By his own admission Cuddy doesn’t have the best thing one can have in Hillston (class), or even the second best thing (looks). What he does have are brains and he makes use of them in this, the second of the Justin and Cuddy mysteries. With a young African-American man’s execution on the horizon, racial tensions rise in the town and things only get worse when the convict’s brother is murdered. Then a candidate for governor becomes involved and starts receiving death threats. Complicating matters is the fact that the politician’s wife is Cuddy’s first–and perhaps only real–love.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1989, Malone, Michael, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont

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by | March 16, 2009 · 10:59 am

Margaret Maron. Bootlegger’s Daughter. New York: Mysterious Press, 1992.

Lawyer Deborah Knott is a modern southern woman, but as the only daughter of a notorious, retired bootlegger, she still has one foot in the traditions of the old south. After one of the local judges is particularly and unnecessarily harsh on one of her partner’s clients, she decides to run for a seat as district judge in Colleton County. The campaign is a hard one, but Deborah is also distracted by her large family and gets tangled up in trying to resolve the 18-year old unsolved murder of a neighbor. The first in the Deborah Knott series of mysteries, Bootlegger’s Daughter also won four of the major mystery awards: the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, & Macavity Awards.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1992, Coastal Plain, Maron, Margaret, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | December 10, 2008 · 9:48 am

David Fuller Cook. Reservation Nation. Albany, CA: Boaz Publishing Co., 2007.

The Uwharrie people no longer exist as an identifiable group in North Carolina but David Fuller Cook has used their name in this novel set on a Indian reservation in an unnamed state, possibly North Carolina.  The novel is narrated by Warren Eubanks, a member of the tribe who has grown up in the care of his grandparents.  Warren, whose Indian name is The Seed, moves back in forth in time, talking about people and events in his childhood, and stories of earlier times, trying to understand Native American culture, the intentions of white people and institutions, and the choices that his relatives and neighbors have made.  Shifting federal government policies, tribal government, mineral rights, Christian mission schools, and the American Indian Movement all appear in the narrative, but the book never feels like a history lesson.   Instead, the reader is taken into the narrator’s world, becoming immersed in the reservation and the lives of its people.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Cook, David Fuller

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by | November 3, 2008 · 11:00 am

Carolyn Rawls Booth. A Chosen Few. Chapel Hill, NC: Chapel Hill Press, 2008.

A Chosen Few is the third in Carolyn Booth’s trilogy of books that recount the struggles of rural, coastal North Carolinians during the 1920s and 1930s. While the plot revolves around the Ryan and McBride families and their relationships, much of the characters’ attention and activities are directed toward the the Penderlea Homestead Farms and other New Deal politics/projects of the Great Depression. The brainchild of Wilmington businessman Hugh MacRae, the Penderlea Homesteads were meant to be part of a cooperative, self-sufficient “farm city” in Pender County that would provide resettlement and relief for bankrupt farmers. The author was born in Bladen County and her family lived on a Penderlea Homestead until 1939; A Chosen Few is loosely based on her family and its experiences.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Bladen, Booth, Carolyn Rawls, Coast, Coastal Plain, Historical, Novels in Series, Onslow, Pender

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by | August 18, 2008 · 12:14 pm

Katy Munger. Legwork. New York: Avon Books, 1997.

Casey Jones wants to be a private detective, but due to a felony conviction in the distant past she cannot get a license. Instead, she does the next best thing and works for a legitimate P.I., answering his phone, bodyguarding, and doing the legwork on some of his cases. In Legwork, the first novel in the Casey Jones series, Casey’s bodyguarding client is arrested for murdering a powerful and lecherous real estate developer. The arrestee is political candidate Mary Lee Masters–a “New Southern Woman” who could be the first female U.S. Senator from N.C–and she offers Casey twice her normal pay to find out who’s trying to frame her.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 1990-1999, 1997, Durham, Munger, Katy, Mystery, Novels in Series, Wake

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