Summary: |
It s a bright June afternoon and old-house-fixer-upper Jake Tiptree is driving through downeast Maine on an unusual errand. She s getting ready to interview a large, angry man with a criminal history. Jim Diamond may or may not be harassing his ex-wife with life-threatening letters, but Jake promised her new housekeeper, Bella Diamond, she'd look into the matter. An ex-con and a deadbeat, Jim Diamond doesn't have a history of violence that is, not until Jake arrives at his apartment and discovers that a killer has been there first. Suddenly Jake and her best friend, Ellie White, find themselves at the center of a murder with too many suspects and too few clues. And as if that s not enough, Jake is now saddled with the manic Bella, whose certainty that she'll be the next victim is fueling a supercompulsive neatness one that threatens to clean Jake and her long-suffering husband, Wade, out of house and home. Add to that a moose in her kitchen, a rebellious son with a habit of dumping Miss Right for Miss Wrong, and a troublesome ex of her own, and Jake is already at wit's end. Then she gets word that a horde of her dad's long-lost relatives mean to descend on Eastport, intending to be put up at her far-from-fixed-up fixer-upper. When the killer does strike again, it's not where Jake expects and the victim couldn t be more of a surprise. For this is a case bigger than the usual angry ex-spouse variety, and now that Jake and Ellie have gotten themselves involved, they've each won a special place in a ruthless murderer s master plan of greed, deception, and death. And the prize? A pair of eternally private rooms six feet under!" |