Customer Reviews

Unhinged: A home Repair Is Homicide Mystery

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

 

 

Unhinged is an excellent read for several reasons. First, the book provides a real flavor of Maine, and is clearly written by someone who loves Eastport. The descriptions are vivid and authentic; the author never portrays Eastport as paradise (to the contrary), but one can almost smell the docks and hear the waves crashing and the foghorns blowing. Second, the characterizations in the book are a joy to read. Sarah Graves manages to convey the characterizations as her first-person detective and heroine, Jacobia, perceives them. This gives the reader the same sense of discovery that Jake feels when she learns more about the people involved. Third, the plot was enjoyable. I figured out quite early on who was behind the nasty events in the book, particularly in light of the periodic implicit references to Occam's Razor (the simplest solution. . . .). I did not figure out why, though, so there was some suspense left. (I cannot say any more without giving too much away.) The plot, while enjoyable, was perhaps the weakest aspect of the novel; I periodically wanted to smack Jacobia who seemed to be missing the most obvious clues. But I am more than willing to forgive some weakness in the plot to get that flavor of Maine and the characters in Eastport!

I am also willing to forgive the excessive use of colons. Colons should NOT be used to end paragraphs. But I ignored them in my general delight at this book.

One last positive attribute: I loved the home-repair piece of this book. I live in an old house, not old by Eastport's standards, but old enough to allow me to appreciate the bottomless need for repairs that such houses generate. Sarah Graves manages to be funny and wry, at the same time conveying the general sense of despair that a house can cause in its owner, as every repair generates the need for more, and more serious, action.

This book was an excellent read and I recommend it highly.

Jacobse "Jake" Tiptree lives on the small island of Eastport off the coast of Maine in a home that needs serious renovation otherwise it will soon crumble into nothingness. Not being a millionaire, Jake does as much of the repairs as possible but when she discovers the foundation needs replacing, she advertises for a stone mason. Lian Ash answers the advertisement and Jake hires him on the spot because his rates appear reasonable.

At about the same time Jake hires Lian, the town's most despised gossip, Harriet Hollingsworth, disappears and Harry Markle, a retired NYPD detective, buys the house. Strange things begin to happen on the island like Jake's son getting hurt in a car accident because the brake hose was cut and Jake's husband being injured by a bullet made to explode. Harry thinks it is the work of the serial killer that murdered his wife and girlfriend as well as other police officer's relatives. Jake and her friend Ellie don't buy into that theory and start their own investigation, a move, which brings them and their families closer to death.

UNHINGED is a riveting amateur sleuth mystery filled with enough red herrings to keep the reader totally befuddled until the author chooses to identify the killer. After reading this novel, those fans interested in buying a house will want to purchase something new so they don't have the aggravating repairs the heroine is forced to deal with, sometimes with hilarious results. Sarah Grave imbues her work with a subtle sense of humor so that the tension level of the story line never rises to an unbearable level.

Harriet Klausner

It's a bad couple of days for Jacobia (Jake) Tiptree and her family. After falling off a ladder while working on her old house's gutters, Jake's son is involved in a truck accident, her husband is nearly killed by an exploding shotgun shell, and she discovers major foundation problems. She also decides that the vanished woman down the street must have been killed and it's up to Jake and her friend Ellie to solve the mystery. A questionable foundation man, annoying ex-husband, con-man ecologist, and a cop who seems to think that everything is about him add to the complexity.

Author Sarah Graves seems to know her home repair. For anyone (like me) who has attempted to rennovate an old house, many of Jake's frustrations will ring true. As a loving mother, abandoned child, and hardworking sleuth, Jake Tiptree makes a sympathetic character.

I found the mystery in UNHINGED to be a bit over the top without being funny. The killer's motives are illogical (admittedly he/she was crazy, but still) and few serious mystery readers will be thrown off by the rather weak red-herrings that Graves offers. All of Jake's sleuthing doesn't really lead to much except an exploration into the culture of Eastport, Maine (admittedly, Eastport, Maine seems pretty interesting). I would have liked to see more action on the part of Jake, more logical action, and especially action that had a direct bearing on solving the mystery.

This is the first I've read in the "Home Repair Is Homicide" series. And it will be the last. The characters never come alive, the plot is contrived. The sleuths leap from one improbable conclusion to another. And the writing? Consider that, on pp. 150-151 a single character "snapped," "sneered," "declaimed angrily," "fulminated," "yelled" (twice), "shouted," and finally "expostulated." The verb "said" does not appear to be one Graves is familiar with.

I usually love Sarah Graves home repair series but I could not finish this one. I think it is because my husband was in law enforcement for many years and the story was too close to home. I could easily imagine it happening and did not want to continue reading the story.

I repeatedly struggled with whether to keep reading this book. The characters are very shallow (perky women, mysterious men with deep dark pasts, teenagers who can't decide what they want, etc.) The main character sustains major injuries yet blows them off and flounces on. A huge storm threatens out to sea throughout the book, but never arrives. Paranoia reigns and people are not what they seem. Repeatedly someone walks in the door just as the main character thinks of them or wants to ask them a question.

I never cared, and I finished the book with relief, and regret for wasted time.

I enjoyed the first three of these books, but they are getting harder and harder to like. In the first books Jacobia is competent and confident (with the exclusion of her interactions with her ex-husband Victor). Now she is becoming a mindless goof-up.

There are numerous problems with this book, but I will only mention some here.

Spoilers.....Spoilers....Spoilers

This is the 6th book of the series and it repeatedly talks about Jake being known for injuring herself. But this was never mentioned in any previous book. She has frequently been on ladders, used power tools and worked all by herself or with Ellie and NEVER had any injury.

In the scene where she is stripping the floor with Ellie she uses a sponge mop and gets her sneakers in the stripper. Anyone who has used stripper before, and Jake has, knows that it will melt those items. Then when the melting latex starts making a huge mess they dump more stripper instead of cleaning it all off and starting over. They even remove their respirators, knowing how caustic the stuff is and leave the house for several hours. When they return, instead of giant mess everything is fine.

They then mention sanding the floor after removing the stripper "up to the baseboards". You have to remove the baseboards before stripping and sanding to properly refinish a wood floor, especially when you are going from a dark color to light. Without removing the baseboards they will end up with a dark edge along the baseboards, since you can't get under the baseboard to remove the old finish.

Then there is the scene with the spiders. Jake says they are big and since she can see the violin mark on the underside she knows they are brown recluse. The problems with that are that brown recluse are not considered big spiders, they are normally around ½ to ¾ inch and the violin is on the upper side of the spider behind the eyes. Also, how does her husband Wade know to find her with a glass jar at just the time she finds a whole bunch of spiders?

Then to explain why there are brown recluse in Maine it is mentioned that the "bad guy" bought them and put them in her house. Really, where would a non-scientific person, not associated with any research facility buy brown recluse spiders?

I am also tired of Jake bragging in every book that she can always spot a lie a mile away, only to have the murderer string her along for the entire book. Jake never figures out the lie until there is a gun or knife in her face.

Finally, I am sick to death of Victor. Graves needs to pick a personality and stick with it. This idea that he can be a psychopath out of the doctor's office but be kind and compassionate with patients just doesn't scan. Nobody who purposely inflicts physical pain on someone, they way he did to Jake when they were married by buying her shoes too small, is able to empathize with a patient.

We are treated to stories of Victor's brutality in every book, and yet, Jake does nothing to minimize his impact on and control over her family now. She continues to let him berate her, dump his garbage at her house and demand she feed him dinner. She has even put a financial stake in his medical clinic, making herself again under his financial control. Now she lets him treat her as her doctor? That is just too much.

I might try another of this series in the future, but it won't be anytime soon. There are just too many good, well written cozies out there to stay with a series that is making less and less sense.

This is the first book I've read by Sarah Graves and I'm not having a good time. I love the jokes, it has good humor, but I'm having the hardest time keeping everyone straight.

I'm not sure if it's just my reading and lack of understanding but somehow I'm finding that one minute we're daytime in the hospital and the next we're night time in another town and I don't know how we got there. I'm also having a hard time keeping the characters straight as to who does what, when, where, why and who.

It's probably just me, but this is one of the most frustrating books I've ever read.

I am not impressed. That pretty much says it. This book was very light reading, you could blow it away like a dandelion. I like my books with more heft to them. There was not enough characterizationthe people came across as being cardboard. Graves means well as a writer, shes picked an area which no one else has, concerning a woman and her friends who get involved in mysteries through their home repair. Thats very strange to say the least, but there are other mystery writers out there who use cats, who do catering (which leads to trouble), etc. So I guess a book using home repair as a catalyst for crime is not any more farfetched then the other things.

This book was so uninteresting to me, that every time I picked it up to finish reading it, I couldnt remember the plot line or the characters, and Id have to read back a bit to remember what it was about. I know my memory is shot sometimes, but it isnt that bad, and I dont have that problem with other books!

Karen Sadler

Jessica is taking a leisurely three-day journey on a classic train, the historic Whistler Northwind, with members of the Track and Rail Club through much of British Columbia. She was invited by her friend Reggie Weems who is one of the Vice Presidents of the club. The trip begins and ends in Vancouver, one of her favorite cities.

Not into the trip, Al Blevin, the club's president, goes into convulsions and dies after taking a sip of a Bloody Mary. Immediately Jessica suspects strychnine poisoning. Al's wife Theodora tells Jessica emphatically to stop talking about it being poisoning. She said he had heart failure.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Detective Marshall asks Reggie and Jessica to keep their ears and eyes open and report back to him with any information they get.

Theodora's son, Benjamin, follows Jessica up Whistler Mountain and tells her to "butt out!" She has some accidents and other encounters along the way.

Plus there's the mysterious disappearance of Theodora's previous husband, Elliott Vail. He disappeared on that very train three years ago. Everyone believes he jumped, but his body was never found. Jessica wonders if there is any correlation to Al's death.

Al was not well liked, so there is a plethora of suspects. Plus there is plenty of trouble in his past to add to the suspect list. Can they figure out who did it and why before the end of the trip and everyone heads home and without Jessica finding herself in peril?

After watching so many years of Murder, She Wrote on television, I can "see" the characters acting out the book as I read it. It is a lot of fun and so easy to read.

I especially enjoyed this book with it being set on such a wonderful train trip. The scenery was wonderful. I highly recommend this book.