Customer Reviews

Triple Witch: A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed this book although it is rather lightweight with regards to action and there were some events in it that did not quite ring true to me. Jake Tiptree is still adjusting to life in Eastport, Maine, having moved there from New York. Her house is in desparate need of renovating and she would rather spend her time doing that but gets involved in the death of a young man from the town after she and her best friend, Ellie, find him washed ashore. Then two other people are killed and there is a wave of vandalism and muggings in the previously peaceful small town.
There are plenty of characters to enliven the tale and provide suspects but it is still pretty simple to figure out who did the murders. The strength of this book is in its descriptions of small town life - the citizens, the buildings, the stores, etc. The weaknesses fall in the too pat coincidences (a man that Jake had helped put in jail in NYC has bought a house in the same small town in which she lives after he is paroled, for example).
All in all, a pleasant read for those who do not require their mysteries to have too much depth and don't require too much thinking.

I was surprised to find myself extremely disappointed in this book. I live in Maine, I like to remodel, and I love mysteries. Perfect, right? Nope.

I found the main character to be irritating, her situation with her ex-husband disturbing, and the ghost in her house pointless. The other characters in this charming town are either superfluous, undeveloped, or both. Plot points which are treated as huge exciting elements are obvious and sometimes silly, and plot points which are completely unbelievable are treated like everyday things. I was also distracted by the short mid-novel rant about guns, television, and violence.

I only finished the book because I was curious about how it would end. I did not even get satisfaction there. If you read a lot of mysteries, you are familiar with the exposition that is often necessary to tie up loose ends. This exposition lasted for like 5 chapters - I thought it would never stop, and some of the more "out there" bits of the book were still not explained to my satisfaction.

I will not be reading books by this author again.

A crime wave is sweeping the quiet island town of Eastport, Maine. After discovering the dead body of Kenny Mumford, the town's petty thief and ne'er-do-well, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her best friend, Ellie White, set out to catch the killer. Meanwhile, Jake's attempts to start a new life after quitting her job on Wall Street and moving to Eastport with her teenage son, Sam, are thwarted as two creeps from her past show up: her philandering ex-husband, Victor, and Baxter Willoughby, a crooked stockbroker from New York whom Jake helped put in prison. Between repair jobs on the old house she's renovating and trying to keep Victor from moving in next door, Jake comes across two more bodies and evidence of drug dealing and smuggling. Graves (The Dead Cat Bounce) affectionately creates believable characters (with the exception of cardboard cutout Willoughby), who lend depth and warm humor to the story. While it's not hard to figure out who's behind the mayhem, and the resolution to the mystery fails to thrill, the cozy details of small-town life and home repair make for an enjoyable read.

I could relate to the main charater for several reasons. Being a transplant to Maine and living in a house 109 years old, I can relate to the main charater. I have also visited Eastport and the author's description is perfect of the region and people. Small towns like Eastport are the perfect settings for outsiders to get lost in and commit crimes. Mrs. Graves does not use native Maine pronouncement of words that confuses the reader and mocks residents.

The book moves at a pace fast enough to keep the reader interested, yet slow enough to not overlook too many details. True, I was able to solve the mystery before the story was completed; however, you cannot anticipate the ending. It is not one of those books that gives you too many suspects and too little information. It also doesn't sidetrack the reader with long passionate love scenes. I have read all three of Mrs. Graves novels and am awaiting the release of her next book in August, 2001.

I could relate to the main charater for several reasons. Being a transplant to Maine and living in a house 109 years old, I can relate to the main charater. I have also visited Eastport and the author's description is perfect of the region and people. Small towns like Eastport are the perfect settings for outsiders to get lost in and commit crimes. Mrs. Graves does not use native Maine pronouncement of words that confuses the reader and mocks residents.

The book moves at a pace fast enough to keep the reader interested, yet slow enough to not overlook too many details. True, I was able to solve the mystery before the story was completed; however, you cannot anticipate the ending. It is not one of those books that gives you too many suspects and too little information. It also doesn't sidetrack the reader with long passionate love scenes. I have read all three of Mrs. Graves novels and am awaiting the release of her next book in August, 2001.

Seeing that other reviewers of this book enjoyed it so much more than I did gave me pause (although it hasn't effected my rating). I will add this caveat to my review: I read this book over several weeks and was unable, due to my work schedule, to read more than a chapter at a time. This is not how I prefer to read.

That having been said, I did not care for this book, and I had greatly enjoyed the first one, "Dead Cat Bounce." (The next in this series is "Wicked Fix.") Everything that was charming in the first book seemed trite and overdone in this one.

Retired Wall Street finance wizard Jacobia Tiptree and her son, Sam, are outsiders in the seacoast village of Eastport, Maine, but they have made their home there and settled into the community. When a local ne'er-do-well is found murdered, Jacobia and her best friend Ellie investigate.

I found very little to be believable in this book; nothing rang true. The "ghost" in Jacobia's house keeps moving a spoon around--Jacobia finds this profoundly meaningful, and I found it distracting. Jacobia's ex-husband has apparently engaged in borderline psychotic behavior in the past (faking heart attacks, mailing dead things to people, etc.), but this is described as typical ex-husband behavior, and Jacobia has no fears for her own safety or her son's. Although Ellie is Jacobia's closest friend, we never get any insight into her personality or actions. She is simply a typical (stereotypical) reserved native of Maine--this is supposed to be sufficient to explain all her actions.

The descriptions of life in Eastport eventually overshadow the plot of the book, and the reader is treated to long passages describing shops and houses and people that have nothing to do with the plot. Evoking a nice sense of setting is one thing; writing a travelogue is another.

But most of all, I found the resolution to the mystery to be convoluted and poorly depicted. Despite an action-packed chase scene involving boats, the majority of the denoument occurs verbally, as everything "suddenly falls into place" and Jacobia and Ellie blurt out the solution to every little inconsistency that has occurred in the town over the past several weeks. "And then this happened...and then this happened...and then this happened..." The reader is inundated with sudden resolutions. There is no sense of "fair play" whereby the reader might have solved the crime for him- or herself beforehand.

Still, I enjoy this character (although I wish her ex-husband would disappear from the series), her son, and the setting, and I hope to enjoy the next book in this series as much as I enjoyed the previous.

When I read this author's first book, DEAD CAT BOUNCE, not only was I blown away by the lyricism of the writing--simply gorgeous--but also by the marvelous way the author blended so many disparate items together into one extremely satisfying book. It can't be easy to mix together--much less make sense of--a small town on the very east coast of Maine; a mathematical genius who's a female (Jacobia Tiptree--wonderful name!) for goodness' sake, newly divorced; a teen-aged son who, while not rebellious as most teens are, has his own problems to fight--dyslexia, among others; a former husband with whom Jake somehow manages to be on fairly good terms, even though he is a first-class jerk; a new man in her life, who sounds positively dishy; and--an 1823 house, complete with ghost, and in need of renovations. Somehow the author makes it all work splendidly.

I was somewhat hesitant, therefore, to open TRIPLE WITCH, because the first book had been so wonderful. First books frequently are especially wonderful, just because they're first books. They can gestate for years, if necessary, whereas second books usually have to make their appearance after just a few months. But, Jake and all the above-mentioned components are still all present, including the former husband who's now decided he'll move to Eastport, too.

Triple Witch features an eclectic list of ingredients: a former financial high-flyer who's been barred from the industry, but with an entire room in HIS newly-renovated old house devoted to the very latest computer equipment connected to international financial sources, and with a pasture housing a flock of llamas; a young man, murdered, who's father was also murdered a day later, but leaving behind a barn full of dog-food bags, now containing US money--to the tune of some two million dollars!; an encroaching possible crime-wave in the usually sleepy little village, which has the residents acting as vigilantes, out prowling through the night-darkened streets, but armed only with flashlights.

Ellie White and Jacobia Tiptree are one fabulous and formidable pair of females. Together, along with some help from Jake's friend Wade and her son, Sam, plus Ellie's husband George, and the town's low-key chief of police, Bob Arnold, and even a smidgen of assistance from the former husband, Victor, the bad guys are routed, resulting in a mostly happy ending.

Sarah Graves is indeed marvelous--I'll never hesitate to read another of her books, and neither should you.

(I do have just one teensy-tiny complaint, however. When I was a kid, buckwheat pancakes were fairly easy to come by, and always ranked high on my list of favorite foods. Not so any more, though. Oh, one can find the special flour needed, by why oh, why? wasn't Ellie's recipe included? Bummer. Truly an excellent book otherwise, though!)

Triple Witch written by Sarah Graves.The main city where all the events happen in is EastPort a little island off the coast of Maine.The time in which this story starts is 1999. The book has 291 pages. There were a lot of characters.Jacobia Tiptree was the most important character.Also in the book was her son Sam,her boyfriend Wade,Kenny Mummford who is the first one to die. Unfortunatley her ex-husband Victor decides to move in EastPort. To summerize this story it is about Jacobia who moved from Manhattan to Eastport to get away from her old life. Her and her best friend Ellie find the body of Kenny Mummford.Hallie Quinn who was a teenager used to live with Kenny and was a herion addict.While they try to uncover who killed Kenny more people die. Finally at the end they find out the evil killer. "I felt a burst of fury at poor,foolish Hallie, so certain that she could take care of herself. She couldn't have been dead,Arnold had told us,more than a few hours ago".Page 107. I felt this was a great beginning to a paragraph she wrote. She uses a good way to describe how she is feeling.The cover of the story is a window and two green shutters with a lader by it. During the book Jacobia ia putting new green shutters on. The title is also the name of a ship where you hear at the beginning ,but all the excitment happens at the end. From one to ten i would rate this book a 7. I would recommend this book to people. It was written very nicley and you feel like you know Jacobia and all her friends. It was written well.

Sarah Graves has found two winning characters with Jacobia Tiptree and Ellie White. Although the plot is exciting and gripping on its own, we also find ourselves reading the story for the wonderful characters and the funny, insightful things they say and do. Jake and Ellie's friendship seems very real, and the characters in Eastport, Maine, are all people you want to know. Even when she's writing about creepy characters, she gives them depth. (I wouldn't be surprised if Graves does for Eastport what the TV show "Northern Exposure" did for Alaska.) I stayed up late several nights reading this book because I simply couldn't stop turning the pages. And I can't wait to read more!

First, my gripe. Too many commas. It was distracting and ruined the flow of many, many sentences. Often, I had to re-read sentences to try to understand the meaning behind them. "My ex-husband nodded approvingly at Sam, forgetting what a bad guy he was, himself." "He says he thinks Ken was running drug packages over the border from Canada, in his boat." "...that anybody's going to...make you do any complicated brain surgery, tonight." Graves' use of the comma is excessive and extremely distracting and annoying. I only write this in hopes that the author will take note and insist on (or get) a better editor.

Now, to the compliments. I usually find mysteries a bit dull because the authors concentrate on the story line and pay little attention to character development and decent dialogue. Not so with Graves. It's entertaining to read about two rather bumbling sleuths and not the hard-boiled detective or the far-too-perceptive-to-be-believable rookie. The interplay between Jacobia and Ellie was refreshing. Sometimes Jacobia didn't have a clue and Ellie had to paint a picture for her; other times Jacobia added one plus one on her own and came up with two.

Graves uses a technique that until now, I hadn't noticed that I haven't seen much in recent years in my reading (particularly mysteries): the tickler last sentence of a chapter that made you decide to read on although you'd planned to stop for a while. That ploy seems to be a lost art.

I have since picked up Graves' first book, The Dead Cat Bounce, and look forward to her next one.