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NAIL BITER
by Sarah Graves
Bantam, October 2006
352 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0553585797


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Jacobia 'Jake' Tiptree used to be a hotshot on Wall Street but left that all behind when her marriage fell apart and she found out her son Sam was involved with drugs. She moved to Maine and started to become a home repair maven. Happily, Jake has found a new, wonderful husband Wade. Unfortunately, her old cheating spouse Victor has followed her because he just can't leave her or their son alone.

Along with her best friend Ellie, Jake has started to rebuild a house and they have found people to live there for the winter months. The group renting the house call themselves witches and have let everyone in town know they are a coven. This hasn't made Jake any more popular to the long-term residents of her small town of Eastport.

Jake is constantly called to the rental house to update the maintenance and as a winter storm approaches she is called to the house yet again. When she gets there and starts to make the needed repairs, she uncovers the body of Eugene Dibble, a young man who was known to be a small time thief and drug dealer.

The police are called in to solve the murder, but then the youngest member of the coven, the non-speaking pre-teen daughter of one of the women, is discovered to have gone missing. Jake fears that she might have seen who killed Dibble and might have either run away or have been taken by the killer.

Because the local sheriff is told to let the Feds take over, he is certain that the missing girl might be seen as just a runaway and won't get as much attention as the murder, with its supposed drug connection. Since Jake has helped the police before, he asks her to try to find the missing girl.

I like a lot about this book. I like the location and interesting people that surround Jake. The dialogue is nicely written and the books travel at a brisk pace.

Unfortunately, a lot of things just didn't seem real to me. Jake has some sort of secret that has scarred her from the days of her childhood but she hasn't mentioned details of it to anyone. Being as strong and as helpful to others who have problems as Jake is, I can't understand why she hasn't even told those closest and dearest to her, especially as she seems to be so hurt by it.

Jake also puts herself into very dangerous positions over and over again, and she is almost killed more than once, but still doesn't learn the lesson that she can't handle herself as well as she thinks she can. A death wish didn't seem to be a part of this character's previous makeup.

Jake also says she's terribly bothered by the girl's disappearance and she fears that the teen is being abused by the men who took her, but Jake still takes time out from her search to rebuild her front porch and do other chores rather than trying to find the girl. That just doesn't ring as true to me.

The supporting characters also aren't used well. Her friend Ellie just shows up as a driver of cars and boats and Jake's husband Wade only shows how wonderful he is by never telling Jake not to do something, even when it's not well thought out and could get her killed. Wade is written as a one-dimensional cheering section who would be condemned if he disagreed with anything Jake wants to do.

This book also kills off a main character in the series and does it in a fast off-hand way that wasn't satisfying at all. And all through the story a lot of time is spent on Jake's father digging up a mysterious book from the foundation of the old house, just to have her start to read it as an intro to the next installment in the series. I'd prefer each book not end by creating a mystery that will be continued in the next.

If you are already a fan of the Home Repair is Homicide mysteries, you might still like NAIL BITER because it contains a pivotal character change. But if you haven't seen any of the other eight in this series, I urge you to read an earlier one.

Reviewed by A. L. Katz, January 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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