Incensed by judicial injustice, lawyer Deborah Knott decides on the spur of the moment to run for a vacant appointment in her home town of Cotton Grove, Colleton County, North Carolina. It’s a four-way race, and Deborah’s position is made a little more complicated by the fact that her estranged father was the county’s most renowned bootlegger. That would be tricky enough, but when fliers begin appearing, on her letterhead, racially vilifying her main opponent, the race gets dirty.
At the same time eighteen-year-old Gayle Whitehead approaches Deborah to find out who murdered her mother. When Gayle was three months old she and her mother vanished; they were found three days later, in an abandoned mill – Gayle was starving, sodden and soiled, and Janie had been hit over the head, unconscious for several days, then shot.
Aside from a prologue the action takes place in the 'present' (it was published early in the 80's and is a little dated) but concerns events from almost twenty years ago, providing many opportunities for contrasting attitudes then and 'now' - the most marked contrasts revolve around civil rights, both racial and sexual, with the latter playing a particularly integral role in the plot.
The first in a series, Bootlegger’s Daughter is stronger on character development and scene setting than suspense, and though I didn't guess the murderer early I wasn't as interested in her/his identity as I was in the rest of the story, which includes the unfurling of Deborah's relationship with her father, and the resolution of the election.
I've read Bootlegger's Daughter before, maybe a decade ago, and though I couldn't remember anything at all about the plot (except that the titular daughter was the protagonist) I did have positive associations with it. I'll read the next in the series but not necessarily commit to the ten or so. - Alex
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