Rating: 
Summary: Superb mystery with insight into Jake's personal life
Review: Though she made a fortune on Wall St., her son was into drugs. Realizing, she needed to make a drastic change, she quit her prestigious job and dragged her unwilling son to Eastport, Maine. Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree knows she has done the right thing when her son turns around and begins to behave like a pain in the butt sixteen-year old. Though the town is quiet, Jake soon tumbles into her second murder investigation in less than a year when she finds a dead person with a bullet in his head. She also learns that Brewster Willoughby, an embezzler trader who Jake sent to prison, has arrived on the island. Two more deaths follow that leaves Jake believing that Brewster is involved. She begins to make inquires without realizing that both her life and that of her son's may be jeopardy. TRIPLE WITCH, Sarah Graves' second novel is as exciting as her debut tale, THE DEAD CAT BOUNCE. However, this time the plot is more complex and humorous. Jake's ex-spouse, a selfish, manipulative creep, explains the family dynamics that cleverly lighten the growing tension. Ms. Graves writes a hard to put down entertaining mystery that will be reread numerous times by amateur sleuth fans. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Triple Witch
Review: A crime wave is sweeping the quiet island town of Eastport, Maine. After discovering the dead body of Kenny Mumford, the town's petty thief and ne'er-do-well, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her best friend, Ellie White, set out to catch the killer. Meanwhile, Jake's attempts to start a new life after quitting her job on Wall Street and moving to Eastport with her teenage son, Sam, are thwarted as two creeps from her past show up: her philandering ex-husband, Victor, and Baxter Willoughby, a crooked stockbroker from New York whom Jake helped put in prison. Between repair jobs on the old house she's renovating and trying to keep Victor from moving in next door, Jake comes across two more bodies and evidence of drug dealing and smuggling. Graves (The Dead Cat Bounce) affectionately creates believable characters (with the exception of cardboard cutout Willoughby), who lend depth and warm humor to the story. While it's not hard to figure out who's behind the mayhem, and the resolution to the mystery fails to thrill, the cozy details of small-town life and home repair make for an enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read
Review: First, my gripe. Too many commas. It was distracting and ruined the flow of many, many sentences. Often, I had to re-read sentences to try to understand the meaning behind them. "My ex-husband nodded approvingly at Sam, forgetting what a bad guy he was, himself." "He says he thinks Ken was running drug packages over the border from Canada, in his boat." "...that anybody's going to...make you do any complicated brain surgery, tonight." Graves' use of the comma is excessive and extremely distracting and annoying. I only write this in hopes that the author will take note and insist on (or get) a better editor. Now, to the compliments. I usually find mysteries a bit dull because the authors concentrate on the story line and pay little attention to character development and decent dialogue. Not so with Graves. It's entertaining to read about two rather bumbling sleuths and not the hard-boiled detective or the far-too-perceptive-to-be-believable rookie. The interplay between Jacobia and Ellie was refreshing. Sometimes Jacobia didn't have a clue and Ellie had to paint a picture for her; other times Jacobia added one plus one on her own and came up with two. Graves uses a technique that until now, I hadn't noticed that I haven't seen much in recent years in my reading (particularly mysteries): the tickler last sentence of a chapter that made you decide to read on although you'd planned to stop for a while. That ploy seems to be a lost art. I have since picked up Graves' first book, The Dead Cat Bounce, and look forward to her next one.
Rating: 
Summary: very disappointing
Review: I could relate to the main charater for several reasons. Being a transplant to Maine and living in a house 109 years old, I can relate to the main charater. I have also visited Eastport and the author's description is perfect of the region and people. Small towns like Eastport are the perfect settings for outsiders to get lost in and commit crimes. Mrs. Graves does not use native Maine pronouncement of words that confuses the reader and mocks residents. The book moves at a pace fast enough to keep the reader interested, yet slow enough to not overlook too many details. True, I was able to solve the mystery before the story was completed; however, you cannot anticipate the ending. It is not one of those books that gives you too many suspects and too little information. It also doesn't sidetrack the reader with long passionate love scenes. I have read all three of Mrs. Graves novels and am awaiting the release of her next book in August, 2001.
Rating:
Summary: Triple Witch
Review: I could relate to the main charater for several reasons. Being a transplant to Maine and living in a house 109 years old, I can relate to the main charater. I have also visited Eastport and the author's description is perfect of the region and people. Small towns like Eastport are the perfect settings for outsiders to get lost in and commit crimes. Mrs. Graves does not use native Maine pronouncement of words that confuses the reader and mocks residents. The book moves at a pace fast enough to keep the reader interested, yet slow enough to not overlook too many details. True, I was able to solve the mystery before the story was completed; however, you cannot anticipate the ending. It is not one of those books that gives you too many suspects and too little information. It also doesn't sidetrack the reader with long passionate love scenes. I have read all three of Mrs. Graves novels and am awaiting the release of her next book in August, 2001.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Series Entry
Review: I enjoyed this book although it is rather lightweight with regards to action and there were some events in it that did not quite ring true to me. Jake Tiptree is still adjusting to life in Eastport, Maine, having moved there from New York. Her house is in desparate need of renovating and she would rather spend her time doing that but gets involved in the death of a young man from the town after she and her best friend, Ellie, find him washed ashore. Then two other people are killed and there is a wave of vandalism and muggings in the previously peaceful small town.
There are plenty of characters to enliven the tale and provide suspects but it is still pretty simple to figure out who did the murders. The strength of this book is in its descriptions of small town life - the citizens, the buildings, the stores, etc. The weaknesses fall in the too pat coincidences (a man that Jake had helped put in jail in NYC has bought a house in the same small town in which she lives after he is paroled, for example).
All in all, a pleasant read for those who do not require their mysteries to have too much depth and don't require too much thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Great book and wonderful story!
Review: I loved this book. I really enjoyed the scenic descriptions. The plot with the ex-husband was interesting though very antagonizing to read. Sarah Graves definitely has a winning series here and I look forward to reading the next installment with Jake and Ellie.
Rating:
Summary: very disappointing
Review: I was surprised to find myself extremely disappointed in this book. I live in Maine, I like to remodel, and I love mysteries. Perfect, right? Nope. I found the main character to be irritating, her situation with her ex-husband disturbing, and the ghost in her house pointless. The other characters in this charming town are either superfluous, undeveloped, or both. Plot points which are treated as huge exciting elements are obvious and sometimes silly, and plot points which are completely unbelievable are treated like everyday things. I was also distracted by the short mid-novel rant about guns, television, and violence. I only finished the book because I was curious about how it would end. I did not even get satisfaction there. If you read a lot of mysteries, you are familiar with the exposition that is often necessary to tie up loose ends. This exposition lasted for like 5 chapters - I thought it would never stop, and some of the more "out there" bits of the book were still not explained to my satisfaction. I will not be reading books by this author again.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful, funny, and gripping--all at once
Review: Sarah Graves has found two winning characters with Jacobia Tiptree and Ellie White. Although the plot is exciting and gripping on its own, we also find ourselves reading the story for the wonderful characters and the funny, insightful things they say and do. Jake and Ellie's friendship seems very real, and the characters in Eastport, Maine, are all people you want to know. Even when she's writing about creepy characters, she gives them depth. (I wouldn't be surprised if Graves does for Eastport what the TV show "Northern Exposure" did for Alaska.) I stayed up late several nights reading this book because I simply couldn't stop turning the pages. And I can't wait to read more!
Rating:
Summary: This book just didn't ring true.
Review: Seeing that other reviewers of this book enjoyed it so much more than I did gave me pause (although it hasn't effected my rating). I will add this caveat to my review: I read this book over several weeks and was unable, due to my work schedule, to read more than a chapter at a time. This is not how I prefer to read. That having been said, I did not care for this book, and I had greatly enjoyed the first one, "Dead Cat Bounce." (The next in this series is "Wicked Fix.") Everything that was charming in the first book seemed trite and overdone in this one. Retired Wall Street finance wizard Jacobia Tiptree and her son, Sam, are outsiders in the seacoast village of Eastport, Maine, but they have made their home there and settled into the community. When a local ne'er-do-well is found murdered, Jacobia and her best friend Ellie investigate. I found very little to be believable in this book; nothing rang true. The "ghost" in Jacobia's house keeps moving a spoon around--Jacobia finds this profoundly meaningful, and I found it distracting. Jacobia's ex-husband has apparently engaged in borderline psychotic behavior in the past (faking heart attacks, mailing dead things to people, etc.), but this is described as typical ex-husband behavior, and Jacobia has no fears for her own safety or her son's. Although Ellie is Jacobia's closest friend, we never get any insight into her personality or actions. She is simply a typical (stereotypical) reserved native of Maine--this is supposed to be sufficient to explain all her actions. The descriptions of life in Eastport eventually overshadow the plot of the book, and the reader is treated to long passages describing shops and houses and people that have nothing to do with the plot. Evoking a nice sense of setting is one thing; writing a travelogue is another. But most of all, I found the resolution to the mystery to be convoluted and poorly depicted. Despite an action-packed chase scene involving boats, the majority of the denoument occurs verbally, as everything "suddenly falls into place" and Jacobia and Ellie blurt out the solution to every little inconsistency that has occurred in the town over the past several weeks. "And then this happened...and then this happened...and then this happened..." The reader is inundated with sudden resolutions. There is no sense of "fair play" whereby the reader might have solved the crime for him- or herself beforehand. Still, I enjoy this character (although I wish her ex-husband would disappear from the series), her son, and the setting, and I hope to enjoy the next book in this series as much as I enjoyed the previous.
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