Bantam Books
294 pp, $21.95 ($32.95 Canadian)
Eastport’s most famous sleuth, Jacobia Tiptree, is once again on the trail of a cold-blooded murderer in Mallets Aforethought, the seventh mystery by Sarah Graves – who just keeps getting better and better.
This time, tragedy strikes close to home as the husband of Tiptree’s best friend and partner in crime detection becomes the prime suspect in the eyes of the police. And to make matters more urgent, best friend Ellie is pregnant and close to delivery time.
Graves’s characters, both familiar and new, are becoming more complex, more multi-dimensional, and Tiptree has also developed a wicked sense of gallows humor. After the discovery of the corpse of the least popular resident – let’s face it; he’s pond scum – Ellie wonders out loud if maybe she and Tiptree can just wall the body up again where they found it.
“Actually, we could have,” says Tiptree. “Powdered lime for Hector; quick-set plaster for that door; fresh wallpaper; and in a few hours we could be sitting pretty in the corpse-concealment department.” Obviously, she’s given this some thought.
While we here like to think of Graves’s books as Eastport mysteries, her publisher calls them the “Home Repair is Homicide” series. And Graves does offer real tips on repair, this time focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on windows and sashes.
She writes: “Finally, I intended to caulk under the frames, squeezing the seal tight to form something more durable than the current temporary fix. For a while I’d also considered packing the screw holes with plastic wood, since removing the screws would strip the holes smooth, rendering them useless. But the best plan was to drill them a little bigger and tap in dowel pins; that way there would be at least some good wood in those old windows.”
But Tiptree also says: “Fortunately, however, I am naturally equipped with the one tool that is most essential for old house fix-up. That is, bonehead stubbornness.”
It has to be said that Jacobia is in fact such a home repair addict that even in a place where she ought not to be she says, “Then, keenly aware that what I should’ve been doing was calling the police, I went through the house. Part of my mind automatically listed the many repairs the house needed. A stair tread was loose and would break someone’s neck someday if it didn’t get replaced. The tap in the ghastly bathroom was dripping, running up the water bill. And when I snapped on the light switch at the top of the stairs it made a zzzt! noise under my hand, yikes.”
Tiptree’s, and therefore Graves’s, continuing love affair with Eastport is evident throughout Mallets Aforethought, which is full of richly textured descriptions of the port, along with surrounding bays and neighboring towns.
Readers of earlier mysteries will find old friends in these pages, along with some new acquaintances. But Graves also manages to make this one a stand-alone as well.
But when is all and said and done, we come to Jacobia’s discovery and apprehension of the real murderer, full of twists and turns, and ultimately absolutely hair-raising page-turner with the detective’s own life in serious jeopardy.
Tiptree is, for example, at a historical society dinner party.
“I’d have said something appreciative in reply but just then two things happened. The asparagus dish exploded with a startling crack! like a rifle shot. And somebody upstairs began screaming.”
Want to find out why?
Read the book.