Customer Reviews

Slipknot (Jane Bunker Mysteries)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I live in Maine, and have read a couple of L. Greenlaw's books.

I saw her briefly at a book signing in Bangor. She strikes me as a bright, plucky and down-to-Earth woman.
I admire her for the career change in midlife. A swordboat captain turned author? How cool is that?!

I enjoyed SLIPKNOT for the most part. Nice and easy summer read (and please regard that comment as a compliment).

I've often felt that Greenlaw is a keen observer. She has a great ear for dialogue. Wicked good brush strokes on the characters who inhabit Green Haven.

I like Jane Bunker. But I think it will take a few more books before I get to know her. SLIPKNOT feels like a sketch. A promising sketch, but a sketch nonetheless.

Jane is single, approaching her mid-40s. Sharp as a tack. Transplanted Mainer to Florida, where she worked as a cop/investigator, moving back to Maine for the "quiet life".
She takes a job as an entry level insurance assessor, where she finds herself neutered, for lack of a better word. Towards the last third of the book, she transforms yet again into an exceptionally seasoned sailor/fisherman. In some respects, she's the Downeast 007. I thought that perhaps Greenlaw laid it on a bit thick with the seagoing segment of the book. It gets a bit too specific, and I found that I lost sight of Jane Bunker for a moment, and could only think about L. Greenlaw.

Musicians who compose soundtracks for films often talk about how wonderful it is to not be noticed. It means the score enhanced the film without overpowering the imagery. A delicate balance. Looking forward to seeing how Jane Bunker "evolves" in subsequent books. The characters are there. Smalltown coastal Maine flavor is there. Let's see where it goes.

In The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger describes Linda Greenlaw as "one of the best sea captains, period, on the East Coast." Linda Greenlaw is also the author of award-winning nonfiction titles about her adventures as one of the few female swordboat captains in a dangerous and predominantly male-dominated line of work.

After promising her fans for seven years, Linda Greenlaw has released her first fictional offering. Slipknot is the first in a series of mysteries featuring protagonist Jane Bunker, a former big-city homicide detective turned marine insurance investigator. Jane is sent to evaluate Turners' Fish Plant in Green Haven, Maine for an insurance adjustment just as the body of the town drunk washes up on the beach. Jane uses her expertise as a former detective to insinuate herself into the investigation. Folks just naturally assume it's a part of her job for Eastern Marine Security Consultants and not just pure nosiness.

Finding her actual job relatively uninteresting, really, just how many OSHA violations can you document anyway - Jane decides to play detective and unearth the truth behind the "accidental drowning". This is a decision that could turn out deadly as she finds herself in one harrowing predicament after another.

Brimming with interesting characters; like nutty landlords Henry and Alice (who give Jane almost no privacy) and teenaged Audrey the heavily pierced and tattooed lunch counter waitress best known for dishing out gossip as well as muffins. The author also captures the average taciturn northeasterner with flair.

Absolutely fascinating and surprisingly educational, the author has poured her knowledge of the sea and fishing into this book. With a quirky blend of humor and suspense, she keeps the reader on the edge of their seat wondering just what could possibly happen next. Let's all hope that she continues to write future Jane Bunker mysteries, as there are so many more places she could go with this character. Jane Bunker has real potential.

I was worried when I found out Linda Greenlaw's newest book, Slipknot, was a murder mystery. I loved her non-fiction, but being a librarian I've read other authors who have tried and in my opinion failed. Relax. Linda keeps her sense of humor and her wonderful New England characters in perfect perspective. The detective is believable, intelligent, and fun. (Like I've always believed the author would be if I met her) I loved this book, and plan on keeping up my one-sided girlfriend relationship with Linda.

Jo Faye Walker

I loved Linda Greenlaw's, "The Hungry Ocean", and plan to read her other titles, but first, I decided to see how she does as a fiction writer.

Not as well. Although Slipknot shines at times, particularly during the scenes on the water, the author's first person portrayal of Jane Bunker is a bit too uneven. The woman is in her 40's and still single. That doesn't happen by accident - but here it's never explained to reader's satisfaction. Does she fear commitment? Is she still a virgin? What is it that's kept her single? In non-fiction, an author can get away with shallow characterization, but in fiction, the reader needs to know the person inside because that's how their transference takes place. This woman is 42. She has to be hardened by now, yet she reacts like a teenager when the first guy smiles at her. That's out of character. She's supposed to be a veteran big city detective, but she seems oblivious of the danger she routinely puts herself in as she prowls the small town. That's out of character too.

I don't know why a person who has as much in-depth knowledge of the ocean and love for all things nautical as Linda Greenlaw would start writing land-based detective fiction. Whatever the reason, she did. Does she succeed? Yes. A person like Linda will succeed in whatever she sets out to do, but this time out, not to the same degree as in her non-fiction work: the best scenes in Slipknot take place aboard a fishing vessel during a storm, and that's where I recommend the author set her next fictional story.

Art Tirrell is the author of The Secret Ever Keeps

If you are looking for a light mystery for a beach read, this one will keep you guessing to the very end.

Jane Bunker moves from the heat of Miami to the cool shores of Green Haven, Maine to become an inspector for a marine insurance company. A twenty-year veteran homicide detective, she can't quite leave her past behind, especially when a dead body turns up her first day on the job. Although everyone is determined to shrug off the death of the town drunk as an accident, Jane can't disregard the man's bashed in skull quite as easily. While using the cover of inspecting properties for the insurance company, she covertly investigates what she calls murder.

Linda Greenlaw is a skilled mystery writer. She lays clues down and creates doubts that keep you guessing until the last pages. Unfortunately, I'm not as great a fan of the straight prose. There were many pages where I got lost in the descriptions of boats and fishing jargon. Possibly someone more well-versed in this industry would understand some of the passages better than I did, but just because she lost me does not make her a bad writer. Far from it. One passage during a storm nearly had me reaching for my motion sickness pills.

If you just want a good mystery, this is one. Just skip the sections about the fishing factory. If you know anything about oceans and the fishing industry, you'll love this book. Take it along on your next voyage and enjoy.

Reviewed by Vicky Burkholder
on 08/14/2007

Linda Greenlaw's "The Hungry Ocean" was a very fine book indeed. It was fine because Ms. Greenlaw had (unintentionally) spent years researching swordfishing, and because she is smart, sharp-eyed, and because she understands how things work. Her strength is making a complex operation clear to people for whom it is completely foreign. "The Lobster Chronicles" was less good: not because Ms. Greenlaw doesn't understand it, but because lobster fishing is less complicated and more familiar.

Her first published fiction is only so-so. It plays to her strengths only in the chapter dealing with stern-dragging for cod. Her strengths do not include creating a distinctive and plausible voice for each of her characters: her teen-age lunch-counter waitress has the vocabulary of a Colby English major; her sometimes-tipsy landlords only talk to show off their eccentricities: do they have a history? Were they ever young, and if so, when? Her heroine doesn't seem to know the name of the man who taught her what she knows about fishing--she always calls him "my mentor." In a way, that's how we think of important people in our lives; but I, at least, call my instructors by their names: if I speak to them in my daydreams, it is as if they were here.

Jane Bunker, the heroine/narrator has been a criminal investigator in Miami, and was whisked away to Florida by her mother when she was young. But there doesn't seem to be any detail behind these surface facts: when my son was working at becoming a writer, he kept time lines on all the people in his stories and wrote short pieces about their earlier doings: not things that mattered to his main story, but things for them to remember when the plot got slow.

And so, I think this is only a so-so book: bright occasionally; perhaps promising; but "needs work".

I've read everything Greenlaw has to offer and loved everything; even the cookbook was a great "read." She is an author whose voice you hear in the background while reading---at least, that is how I perceived this book. I feel I sort of know her. Jane Bunker could very well be Linda Greenlaw as she writes with authority. Greenlaw's own true-life rendition of the triad of nasty n'or eastern storms in the middle of the Atlantic was titled "The Hungry Ocean," was mighty hard to put down. Sebastian Junger wrote a great book ("The Perfect Storm") about the storm, but you feel the first person narrative of Greenlaw's---stays with you longer. So, I liked this book because I knew what I was reading was well-researched or had been experienced first-hand. It's not brain surgery, it's not meant as the great american novel to end all novels---it is a great beach book that happens to be skillfully, expertly, and wonderfully wrought. I agree that the ending seems to leave a question about the heroine, Jane Bunker, but that's ok. It's nice to read something once in a while that leaves you wondering. Maybe Greenlaw will be coaxed into writing a sequel, or another in a series---maybe she is already at work on the next one. I hope so- because I like the setting. I live in Connecticut and have a simple basic knowledge about the fishing limits imposed on our dwindling fishing fleets and the debacle of protecting Long Island Sound from--you name it (Linda, if you read this, please come to CT for your next book-- there's lots more intrigue in these monied and overpriced homesteads on the waterfront, and I suspect a lot of skeletons in closets, not to mention an insurance investigator's playground...) There isn't anything else to say about this book other than it took me one morning the day after I received it, about 2.5 hours of time to complete it and, I couldn't even wait to go to the beach, I had to read it right away. I didn't want it to end. Except--one more thing, it's the perfect book to script into a movie; I could see a Julia Roberts-type with Jeff Bridges as the ---no wait. YOU read it & see what you think...!

Jane Bunker wants a quieter, more sedate life. She accepts an entry level position as an insurance investigator, leaving behind the violence and murder in her Florida job as a homicide detective.

Along with the lazy, hazy everyday life of the small Maine fishing village, she finds murder, conspiracy, and arson; some trade off.

Linda Greenlaw couples her skills as a seafaring captain with knowledge of the people who take a living from the ocean's harvest and introduces us to the grit and underlying currents of seaport life and those who live it.

Good characters; good plot; good action and suspense; very good read.

Reviewed by Wanda C. Keesey

Jane Bunker moved north from Miami only days before Nick Dow, the town drunk of Green Haven, Maine, washed up on the beach with his head bashed in--possibly the result of a drunken fall, but maybe not. Jane, who'd been a homicide detective in Florida, is among the first to see the body, and though it's no longer in her job description--she's now a marine insurance investigator--she decides to investigate the death on her own by way of having a hobby. The more she looks into the death, the more fishy it seems to be. Jane suspects it's connected to the hot-button issue that's got the town riled up, the proposed creation of a wind farm off-shore, which would likely have an adverse effect on the town's cod fishing industry.

Jane is a likable protagonist, frugal in speech and finances. We're given to understand that she is running away from her old life in Florida while at the same time returning to her roots. Jane's mother was from Green Haven. She left family behind when she abandoned Maine--running away from something, just as her daughter would--during Jane's childhood. This back story will presumably be fleshed out in subsequent installments in the series. Greenlaw here introduces a number of characters who will likely be regulars: the laconic, slightly hunchbacked Cal, who's fast becoming her friend and accomplice; her frequently sloshed landlords, who are moving into position as surrogate parents; the brash young waitress at the local diner; a potential love interest. It's a cast I'll be happy to spend further time with.

Greenlaw has previously published a handful of nonfiction books, including The Lobster Chronicles and All Fishermen are Liars (see my review) based on her years of experience at sea. (In addition to writing, Greenlaw is the captain of a lobster boat.) Her first foray into fiction reads well for the most part. The mystery held my interest. The writing and the story flow well with a couple of jarring exceptions. There are two scenes in the book which don't work because they are so unrealistic: one at the diner in which Greenlaw has the waitress dramatically narrate events from the previous night's town meeting, and later in the book a sort of catfight between Jane and a local socialite. There is in addition one character--Ginny, a monster of the local fishing industry--whose behavior is too over-the-top to be credible.

My lack of familiarity with naval terminology was not an issue for most of the book, but there is a climactic scene toward the end that I probably would have enjoyed more if I'd had a better idea of what was happening. But even without knowing a turnbuckle from an outrigger I could understand the tenor of what was going on--grave peril and high drama at sea.

I liked Slipknot and look forward to more from Greenlaw. Next up is the series' second knot-titled installment, Fisherman's Bend.

-- Debra Hamel

The world became aware of Linda Greenlaw when her exploits were chronicled in the book "Perfect Storm" and she was portrayed by actress Mary Elizabeth Mastratonio, the captain of the other fishing boat in the George Clooney movie of the same name. Capitalizing on her new-found fame, Linda turned to writing and turned out three excellent non-fiction books: "The Hungry Ocean," "The Lobster Chronicles," and "All Fishermen Are Liars," plus a cook book co-authored with her mother, "Recipes from a Small Island." Now, she turns to fiction with "Slipknot." For a first novel, it is an excellent effort. She has created a singular character, Jane Bunker - former big-city homicide detective from Florida, current marine insurance investigator in Maine. Not much is revealed about her past, including a secret mentor. I suspect she is saving that for future novels. But, what we see of her character is fascinating indeed: a penny-pinching, soon-to-be old maid, with romantic overtures and appreciation for the look of her own breasts. She lays out the mystery in "Slipknot" with ambiguous clues, the occasional red herring, flashes of humor, and a host of interesting characters. For suspense, she gives us a number of surprising events that put the heroine in life-threatening jeopardy, and keep us reading until the end to find out what is really going on. As a mystery writer, she's got the skills down pat. But, she does have a few tell-tale signs of being a novice. First, everyone speaks in the same voice. With the interesting variety of accents available from Maine, she uses none of them. Each of the characters speaks like everybody else. Secondly, sometimes she forgets not-so-incidental occurrences. For example, during her last harrowing adventure, she breaks several ribs. But then, mostly forgets about them. I have broken ribs twice; I know they are not easily forgotten. For example, she lifts four gallon buckets of water (that's over 32 pounds each) over and over with no apparent pain. When she does remember the ribs, it's when she pulls apart a Velcro strip. She also goes overboard in showing off her fishing knowledge with a too-long explanation of cod fishing. But, I am definitely looking forward to her next book and the ones after that, too, with the improvements I know she will insist on making. Linda Greenlaw doesn't have to fish any more, unless it's angling for the right adjective.