About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

DEAD CAT BOUNCE, THE
by Sarah Graves
Crime Line, October 1998
306 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 055357857X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Personally, I'd like to know just exactly what expert skills Jacobia (Jake) Tiptree used on her ex-husband when it came to "not only . . . getting blood from a stone, but . . . making it spurt bright green cash." Jacobia used to be a money trader in New York. Then she became a financial advisor to the wealthy. The "connected" wealthy. She married a brain surgeon and they had a son, Sam. She learned that her husband was "a lying, cheating, son of a bitch with a stone where his heart belonged." She got enough money to not only buy a rambling old fixer-upper in the wilds of Maine, far from his turf in Manhattan, but to actually fix it up, one ever-expanding project at a time. The description on page 4 and 5 of both her husband's mindset and the house she buys is almost worth the price of the book - in paperback, anyway.

This process of restoration is complicated when the body of a local boy-made-good is discovered on her porch with an ice-pick in his head. Not always a fatal wound, but when the victim chews aspirin like it was candy, the prognosis gets lousy.

There is a certain amount of reserve to be expected between Jacobia, a newcomer to Maine, and the people of Eastport. Jacobia, being a stand-up kind of person, is incredibly well-accepted by her neighbors and the tradespeople, who are pretty much one and the same. This rapprochement is, in no small way, aided by her relationship with Wade Sorenson, a local. Jake says of Wade, "He had his own little bungalow down at the water's edge, on Liberty Street, but in his quiet way he had recently installed a spare shaving kit at my house. Coming from Wade, it was a gesture akin to a gift of diamonds." Dead Cat Bounce is full of such concise, brilliant portraits of the characters in Eastport. And there are plenty of characters.

Ellie White confesses to killing Threnody McIlwaine, the man on the porch. There is enough evidence to make this confession believable to most people, except those who know Ellie even a little bit. Ellie asks Jake to find out what's going on, even though she persists in confessing to the killing.

Thren McIlwaine has recently engineered the financial ruin of Ellie's parents Hedda and Alvin, who have a long and convoluted history with Thren. Thren's most recent wife (number 6 or 7, depending on the validity of a previous marriage to someone in Brazil) is much younger, from some war-torn Eastern European county, and not in the least sorry that Thren has died. One of Thren's daughters is married to a local lush, and well aware that she has married beneath her. His other daughter is adopted, and has spent much of her life searching for her birth mother. Neither of them benefit when Thren dies, much to their chagrin.

Ellie has recently resumed a romance with George, who was once busted out in Colorado for having too much pot on his person. George is one of the local law enforcement people, even though his felony conviction would seem to preclude that as a career option. Ellie's parents, Hedda in particular, oppose this connection. Of course, there isn't much Hedda doesn't oppose. Hedda is a bitter, venomous, demanding old woman who remembers her glorious youth, resents the accident which took away her career as a dancer, and never lets anyone forget that she was once young and beautiful. Ellie can only deal with her because she realizes that, "Hedda . . . is a grim, hateful person. She is an unnatural mother, she is never going to be anything else. I didn't make her that way, and I can't stop her being that way. . . She is never going to love me. . . She is never even going to like me. . . And the day I figured that out . . . was the day I became able to deal with Hedda."

Jake keeps asking questions. Her house keeps needing repairs. The relationships get more and more confusing, more intertwined, less clear-cut. The realities of life in a sea-going town in Maine intrude upon Jake's investigation. Sam's father shows up, with the current bimbo in tow. Chapter 41 is, again, pretty much worth the price of the book. Eventually, after several disasters and at least one life-threatening situation, Jake untangles everything.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Graves can give me a sense of place, great characters, and a good mystery - what more can I ask for? I put the next book (A Blonde For a Shilling, according to the teaser but more probably Triple Witch) in the series at the top of my inter-library loan list. I am postponing, with great reluctance, reading Unhinged until I read whatever Sarah Graves wrote between that and Dead Cat Bounce.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, January 2003

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]