Eastport’s amateur sleuth returns
One of the difficulties of reviewing a murder mystery is that you’re tempted to quote or refer to some of the really good stuff. If you do, of course, there’s a good chance you’re going to give away good chunks of the plot.
That said, I’m warning readers of Trap Door, the latest Sarah Graves home-repair-is-homicide novel that you should be prepared to abandon work, chores, any outside interests, after reading the first paragraph. You won’t put the book down. Indeed, I’m resisting a serious temptation to reproduce it here.
Once again the setting is, for the most part, Eastport, and returning characters from earlier mysteries include intrepid amateur detective Jacobia (a.k.a. Jake) Tiptree and her husband and harbor pilot, Wade; her son, Sam; her best friend and fellow sleuth Ellie White, and Police Chief Bob Arnold. But, once again, new readers will find that Trap Door can stand alone as a terrific read.
There are also new and fascinating characters, all carefully drawn and definitely three-dimensional. Their identities, however, will not be revealed here. And Tiptree for the first time travels to St. Stephen, including a visit to the chocolate lover’s holy of holies, the Ganong factory and store, and Saint John, New Brunswick, in pursuit of the perpetrator’s identity.
Jake and Wade also now have a lakeside cottage, another location for mystery action. But it’s also the site of a dock construction project by Tiptree and Ellie that becomes an epic struggle all by itself. The incident points up the fact that while Jacobia is a determined sleuth, she can and does make mistakes — which adds, in Graves’s skillful hands, a great deal to Tiptree’s basic humanity.
And in this volume, Tiptree’s New York City past comes back to haunt her — as does a certain ghost, not to mention an extremely strange book. Her past is also instrumental in putting her in precarious situations that bring to mind the Perils of Pauline.
Home repair continues to be a major theme in Graves’s mysteries, and this time at the head of each chapter there’s a boxed Tiptree Tip. And it’s in the area of said repair that Graves’s sense of humor really shines.
Her descriptive writing is also vivid. She captures the beauty of Passamaquoddy Bay, for example, but when she gets on to a chicken stew, or blueberry scones, or, one of my favorites, poutine, my mouth starts to water.
To say that there are twists and turns in Trap Door is like saying that the Grand Canyon is a big ditch. From time to time, you’ll probably say to yourself, “Aha!” — and you’ll be wrong.
One character who is a regular is Bella Diamond, Tiptree’s housekeeper, a fanatic cleaner and avid reader of mysteries. At one point Bella says, “You see, they put in clues. And if they do it right, and you read `em careful, you still won’t know who done it. But you’ll think you should’ve.”
I couldn’t describe Sarah Graves better myself.
So who fell, or was pushed, through the trap door? Find out when the book becomes available on Dec. 26.
Bob Gustafson is a semi-retired veteran reporter who lives and works in Eastport.