Sarah Graves Nail Biter

Nail Biter

Sarah Graves

Bantam, Jan 2006, $22.00, 272 pp.

ISBN: 0553803107

Having left Wall St. behind upon finding her spouse Victor cheating on her, and her son Sam using drugs, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree divorced her husband and took her son to Eastport, Maine. There she eventually married Wade Sorenson and with her best friend Ellie White buy a beachfront fixer-upper with plans to lease the house especially when the tourists come to New England.

Currently they rent the place out to a coven of amateur witches who Jake believes must have cursed Ellie and her as they seem to always need a repair or two at the most inopportune moments. While a storm rages, Jake, toolkit in hand, arrives at the cottage to make a repair. In the nearby tool shed, Jake finds the corpse of thieving street preacher Eugene Dibble. Everyone had a motive to see Dibble leave town but nobody knows who would go to the extreme of shooting him. After coven member ex-cop Jenna Durrell compromised the crime scene, the others claim they were busy conjuring so heard nothing over the storm. After another incident occurs, with Ellie helping Jake investigates.

The latest "Home repair Is Murder" amateur sleuth mystery is an intriguing tale due to a strong who-done-it. Jake assumes one of the coven members killed Dibble, but finds no motive beyond that no one wanted the petty thief in town. Besides playing 1823 and dealing with Victor more than ever, Jake is at her tough best even when she and her partner deal with a NAIL BITER life and death crisis. Readers will take immense delight with Jake's investigation so she can further repair and lease her fixer-upper.

Harriet Klausner