Bantam Books, 260 pp.
Hardbound, $19.95 U.S.,
$29.95 Canadian
Eastport sleuth back on the case
There’s Eastport, Maine, and then there’s Sarah Graves’s Eastport, Maine. And the latter is best summed up in her latest murder mystery, Unhinged.
“It’s quiet: church socials and baked bean suppers, concerts in the band shell on the library lawn when the weather is warm. There’s the Fourth of July in summer, a Salmon Festival in fall, and high school basketball during the school year, of course.
“But that’s it. Not much out of the ordinary happens in Eastport.
“Unless you count the occasional mysterious bloody murder.”
So Graves’s amateur detective and home repair enthusiast Jacobia Tiptree, together with sleuthing partner Ellie White, sets off the solve the latest homicide. For those who’ve read Graves’s other mysteries, the core familiar cast of characters is back – plus a whole new crew of fresh personnel, some good folks, some definite miscreants.
Graves’s love of Eastport shines through all her books, including Unhinged, but while her characters and plots are set locally, there’s also a universality about some of her people. Who, for example, has not met the following resident?
“Harriet Hollingsworth was the kind of person who called 911 the minute she spotted a teenager ambling down the street, since as she said there was no sense waiting for them to get up to their nasty tricks. Each week Harriet wrote to the Quoddy Tides, Eastport’s local newspaper, a list of the sordid misdeeds she suspected the rest of us of committing, and when she wasn’t doing that she was at her window with binoculars, spying out more.”
Once again Graves has provided us with a wonderful combination of a plot with more twists and turns than you can think of with episodes that’ll have you biting your nails perched on the edge of your chair, ghastly murder, serious home repair dos and definite don’ts, and rich characterization.
Without giving too much away, one mark of Unhinged is the development of Jacobia Tiptree’s personal life and background, and it’s hallmark of Graves’s writing generally that such development is never just nailed on; it’s an intrinsic part of the plot.
Suspense?
“‘Trip wire,’ he pronounced. So we all went out the front again, feeling a good deal more nervous than when we had arrived. But not as nervous as we were about to be.
“Not by a long shot.”
Graves also demonstrates her expertise about a variety of subjects without being a showoff, not the least of which is weaponry. We learn that Tiptree is not timid about firepower.
“What I wanted was a Hannibal rifle loaded with one of the cartridges Wade had gotten into his shop the winter before. The Tyrannosaur was named for its muzzle energy: 13,700 joules, three times that of a standard .308 high-powered rifle cartridge.”
While anyone anywhere can relate to Eastport’s amateur detective, Graves includes bits for local readers as well. For example, anyone who drives between Eastport and Calais on a regular basis will relate to Jacobia’s complaint.
“‘I do not see why,’ I babbled anxiously, ‘when the southern Maine Turnpike is being widened to, I gather, about thirty lanes, at a cost of approximately a hundred million billion dollars, we cannot be given the measly few bucks it would cost to put a paved shoulder on Route 1. There are roads in Afghanistan, traveled by donkeys, better treated than …'”
Graves has given her fans another must read. And once again she’s included characters so obviously obnoxious and suspicious that they couldn’t possibly be culprits.
Could they?