A FACE AT THE WINDOW: A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery
Sarah Graves
Bantam
Mystery
ISBN: 9780553806793
Jake (who never uses her real name, Jacobia) Tiptree's true love is working on her dilapidated fixer-upper in the remote island village of Eastport, Maine. With her handyman father off on his honeymoon with Jake's acerbic housekeeper, she has decided to tackle chipping out and replacing her crumbling cement walk. With her husband, Wade Sorenson, Eastport's harbor pilot, off on a job, and her best friend Ellie in Italy with her husband, Jake would be all alone if she weren't babysitting Ellie's three-year-old daughter, Lee.
But Jake is distracted from her life by an unwelcome intrusion from her past. Ozzie Campbell, the man who murdered Jake's mother when Jake was a toddler, is ready to stand trial…and he's gone on the lam. Jake is concerned because she has learned that Campbell read her victim's impact statement right before he vanished. She knows and likes Eastport police chief Bob Arnold, so she doesn't hesitate to tell him that she's terrified Campbell will come after her. Bob, however, believes that Jake is overreacting. He can't imagine that anything in Jake's statement, which recounts events she remembers from being three years old, would be so threatening to Campbell that he would harm Jake. Jake actually agrees with Bob's thoughts, at least in her head. Yet somehow, deep in her gut, she knows she is in imminent danger.
Meanwhile, a troubling narrative from Anthony, a young man on a trip to Maine with his bizarre-acting acquaintance, Marky, lets the reader know that something ominous is definitely in the works: "Discovering that Marky Larson had brought a gun…changed everything for Anthony Colapietro." Marky has a plan, given to him by an unnamed person. Anthony has nothing but regret for being on this caper with Marky, but he doesn't doubt that Marky would just as soon kill him as look at him if Anthony doesn't do his every bidding.
When Jake goes to the hardware store to pick up sidewalk concrete and a trowel, the store owner, Tom Godley, tells her that two strangers had come in with a picture of her and asked questions about her. Godley, of course, reassures Jake that he told them nothing. And yet Jake feels the opposite of reassured. Who could the young men be, and could they be connected to Campbell?
Jake's feelings of unease are nothing, though, compared to the panic she feels when she goes to pick up little Lee at her babysitter's house. Helen, the babysitter, doesn't answer the door. When Jake explores the house, she finds it empty. The sunporch, the room Helen keeps the children in during nice weather, is in a shambles as if there's been a struggle. As Jake's heart drops sickeningly, her phone rings. It's Ozzie Campbell with an ominous message.
Meanwhile, Helen's voice is heard. She's terrified, bound and gagged, in the back of a car next to Lee, who has been drugged. Helen knows their kidnappers, who have made no attempts to disguise themselves, plan to murder her. Her mind flashes back to the survival techniques her stepfather has tried to instill in her. Can she somehow figure out how to save Lee and herself?
Sarah Graves has upped the ante in this episode of her usually excellent A Home Repair is Homicide series, crossing over from mystery to thriller. Although the identity of the perpetrator is apparent early in the story, several scenes are so suspenseful, so pulse-quickeningly terrifying and exciting, that the plot feels like a rollercoaster ride. Fair warning to readers: After the kidnapping, prepare to abandon your real life in order to read this stellar suspense story through to the end. A FACE AT THE WINDOW will truly satisfy Graves fans and should attract many new ones.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)
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