An award-winning mystery novelist and New York Times Bestseller, Margaret Maron uses her North Carolina background when writing the popular Judge Deborah Knott series.

But before Deborah Knott, there was Lt. Sigrid Harald, a homicide detective with the NYPD. Death in Blue Folders is the third book in the Sigrid Harald series. The title refers to some secret files kept by an attorney who was planning to retire when someone decided their secrets weren’t safe as long as even one person knew. From a long-dead movie star, the owner of a trendy art gallery, and an Algonquin Roundtable personality to a senile resident in a nursing home and a broken-down cleaning woman, Lt. Harald must figure out who hated or feared Malcolm Gladwell enough to shoot him. The investigation is not made easier by a hotter-than-usual August and her need to find a new apartment by the end of the month. Nor does it help that artist Oscar Nauman has badgered her into attending a formal charity ball when she doesn’t even own an evening dress.

The Birmingham (UK) Post wrote, “Death in Blue Folders is literate…amusing and well constructed,” while Dorothy Salisbury Davis cheered, “Bravas for the return of Lieutenant Sigrid Harald!”