Christmas Mourning / Margaret Maron

2 out of 5 stars

It's Christmas in rural North Carolina's Colleton County and Judge Deborah Knott is looking forward to a family celebration when a tragedy clouds the holiday season. A beautiful young cheerleader dies in a car crash and the community is devastated by her death. Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant soon learns that her death was not a simple accident, and more lives may be lost unless he and Deborah can discover why she died. 

I had hopes for this mystery, set during the Christmas season, featuring a husband & wife team, a Sheriff’s Deputy and a Judge. Yes, there is a crime and yes, they solve it, but OMG, the amount of irrelevant detail that I had to wade through it get to that!

I am not a big fan of the cozy mystery, so that was the majority of my problem. For lovers of this particular branch of the mystery genre, your experience will be more positive than mine. I do appreciate that knowing some details of the characters’ lives is a positive, but I felt absolutely bogged down in the all the intricate family details, the step-parent angst of Deborah, not to mention all the Christmas gift and food detail.

I’m not sure why every outfit that the Deborah wears needs to be described or why we need details about every meal. I do know, however, that other writers in this genre do exactly the same thing. I think that may be why I like Nordic noir, where the detectives are generally solitary men, eating sandwiches & drinking coffee and hoping that they still have a clean shirt, rather than all of the domestic detail.

Not a bad mystery, but a bit of a disappointment to me.