Everyone in the town of Eastport, Maine, had always said it would only be a matter of time till Faye Anne Carmody’s abusive husband Merle killed her. When Jacobia Tiptree walks into the Carmodys’ butcher shop and finds blood everywhere, she assumes that’s what happened, and so do the police when they arrive.
Then they saw Faye Anne, dazed and covered in blood, and the tidy butcher paper wrapped packages of… Merle.
Jacobia was a financial manager in New York, married to a neurosurgeon, till she chucked the whole power couple lifestyle and moved to small town Maine with her son. In Maine, she’s known as Jake, and she spends her time remodeling her new — but actually very old — home and enjoying the friendships she has made.
Her ex-husband and his parade of girlfriends keep Jake’s life from being too tranquil, as do the murders that punctuate the otherwise even tenor of life on the island. One thing’s clear: life in Eastport is not as simple as it seems on the surface.
The characters are interesting, there’s plenty of local color, and the mystery is tightly plotted.