Death of a Butterfly: Margaret Maron

Julie Redmond is a beautiful woman with few friends. She has been killed in her apartment, shortly after her young son has left for an outing with a neighbor. As Lieutenant Sigrid Harald digs into Julie Redmond's past, she finds that many people would be better off with her dead.

Quote from the entry on this series in Killer Books (1998, by Jean Swanson & Dean James):

Sigrid Harald, Maron's first character, features in a series of police procedurals in the traditional vein set in New York City; her debut was in the novel One Coffee With (Raven House/Worldwide, 1981). Sigrid is a tightly sealed-up character, efficient and seemingly emotionless as the series opens, but as the books progress, Sigrid slowly become less uninvolved with those around her, largely thanks to a relationship with a character introduced in the first book of the series. This series is a textbook example of how a writer can use a series for the natural and interesting development of a character who continues to grow and change.

So what do I like about this series and this book in particular?

To summarize points I made in my review of One Coffee With, the first book in the series:

• I enjoy reading books written in earlier times because they often give a picture of what that time and the attitudes were actually like. This series was written in the early 1980's for the most part, and it reflects those times.
• This is a typical police procedural (especially for the time it was written), but the female protagonist and her emotional issues bring another facet to the story.

I noted in my review of the first book in the series that Sigrid has emotional issues; she resists getting close to people.  Maybe in a male police detective, this would be less noticeable; in a woman, people seem to hold it against her. In this second entry in the series, there is less emphasis on Sigrid's issues with personal relationships and with her mother and father, although there is mention of them here and there. There is a continuing acknowledgement that she comes over to many of the people she works with as cold and condescending. Many of her colleagues who work closely with her know there is more beneath the surface, but even they don't try to breach her reserve.

The mystery is a traditional one, with clues. I missed the clues and was surprised by the ending, but they were definitely there. The emotional issues are there, but all of the personal development is subsidiary to the mystery itself. Her personal life does not take over the story.

As mentioned in the quote above, Harald is Margaret Maron's first series character. In 1992, she started another series with a female protagonist, Judge Deborah Knott. This series has been very successful, and is set in the state Maron grew up in, North Carolina. The first in the series, Bootlegger's Daughter, won four awards for Best Novel: an Edgar, an Agatha, an Anthony, and a Macavity. I have read two books in this series, and I prefer the Sigrid Harald series. But I am planning to check out another book or two in the Deborah Knott series. Maybe I will be more open to the setting and the series now.

I will close with this excerpt from a very interesting interview with the author from 2011:

MM: Place is absolutely crucial to writing. In fact, I take my characters and I put them in a certain place, and I let my story grow organically out of the setting.
...
At the time I created [recurring character] Sigrid Harald, you didn’t have a whole lot of senior women police officers. Women were looked upon as poaching on men’s grounds, and the police force was, like, 90% male at that time. It’s more common now, so to write about her now is a little difficult. You do not realize how the world has changed in 20 years. You do not. Trust me.

R: I don’t know if you’d describe yourself as a feminist, but is gender equality something you try to advocate through your writing?

MM: Absolutely. I don’t know how any career woman could not be a feminist.