Best-selling author Margaret Maron’s colourful Deborah Knott mysteries crackle with sassy Southern dialogue and rural wisdom. In Up Jumps the Devil, fast-moving progress is definitely threatening to forever destroy the leisurely, heart-warming speed of Colleton Region, North Carolina. Area courtroom judge Deborah Knott views trouble making when plans for a fresh interstate highway start pushing up real estate beliefs. As her own relatives fight lifelong neighbors over offering farmland or keeping out, Deborah finds herself calming the combatants with down-home wit-and sometimes, judicial decisions. However when the squabbles escalate to murder, Deborah is usually forced to search for the killer uncomfortably near home. Margaret Maron skillfully attracts on her North Carolina roots to pen her well-crafted, suspenseful mysteries. Her creative talents have gained her the coveted Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Honours. Salt-of-the-earth characters, brilliant with lilting, down-home laughter and unwavering opinions, step from your web pages when narrator C.J. Critt breathes life into them.