The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 12 July 2021
by Philip R. Craig
In the genre of cozy mystery, successful stories are often set in particular locations we find attractive, there's a little bit of romance, some good food, cats, and maybe a holiday celebration, too. This brisk novel, set in the island of Martha's Vineyard, sports all of these. Our hero and narrator, JW Jackson, is a former Boston police officer retired to a busy but quiet life on the island off the south shore of Cape Cod. He enjoys a life of fishing and hunting, cooking, and the warm days of his approaching marriage with his fiancee, Zee. The book opens with a bang, and then cruises for quite a while on life on the island, mild politics, the tangle of small community relationships, fishing and good cooking (Craig would go on to publish a cookbook with is wife, based on these novels). A land owner on the island is moving to the mainland and plans to sell his large property of forest land. Can he sell it to a developer of vacation homes? Should it remain wild? Should it be a patch of island wilderness? Or should it remain the pleasant hunting ground for the local hunters plying their traditional avocation? It's a vital question, and one that, in a small community, generates heated arguments and even threats between hunters and nature-lovers. It is then that the core mystery of this mystery novel finally befalls one of its characters, half way through the book. JW doesn't really make his living as a private detective, but he has a personal aloofness and history that makes him a useful confidante and a guy you might turn to for turning up secrets. His history and connections help him to finally plow beneath the local secrets, local politics and wider threats from bad guys up the food chain. The crime itself, and even its solution are relatively low key and seem even somewhat secondary to the overall arc of Craig's story of retired life in Martha's Vineyard. This is all pleasant enough, even cozy. The book is the second (or fifth?) in a popular series that extended across nineteen volumes, a couple published posthumously. Turn to it for appetizing stories of rich meals and detailed fishing expeditions, local life on a popular offshore tourist vacationland, and JW's wry observations on island life. Oh, and for a murder, too.