By Tracey Arial
Life in a small Maine town, the life and death risks taken by people who work on the sea and the challenges of raising a teenager whose father used to abuse you, are just some of the insights readers get by reading Sarah Graves’ Home Repair is Homicide mystery series.
More than all these benefits though, are the many entertaining hints about how we might repair an old house.
The notched side pieces on wooden steps are called stringers. To replace them exactly, use the old ones as templates on new lumber, then cut notches along the lines you’ve drawn.
Tiptree’s Tips
Our sometimes sleuth Jacobia Tiptree spends most of her time repairing her antique house in the town of Eastport. Every now and then she finds a body or stumbles onto crooks and becomes an amateur detective.
The stories are funny, surprisingly-light given their complicated content. The characters are surprisingly life-like too. I feel like I know Jake, as Jacobia is called, Sam, Ellie and George who are key characters in every story.
The series includes:
- The Dead Cat Bounce, 1998
- Triple Witch, 1999
- Wicked Fix, 2000
- Repair to Her Grave, 2001
- Wreck the Halls, 2001
- Unhinged, 2003
- Mallets Aforethought, 2004
- Tool and Die, 2005
- Nail Biter, 2006
- Trap Door, 2006
- The Book of Old Houses, 2007
- A Face at the Window, 2008
- Knock Down, 2011
- Dead Level, 2011
- A Bat in the Belfry, 2012
For more information, refer to the author’s website.
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i[‘GoogleAnalyticsObject’]=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,’script’,’//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js’,’ga’);
ga(‘create’, ‘UA-45892555-1’, ‘robertfrankmedia.blogspot.com’);
ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’);
