Repair to Her Grave

Home repair can be murder.

Jacobia Tiptree and her teenage son are used to their Eastport, Maine, home attracting more than its share of houseguests. This year Jake is hoping the plaster dust will keep them away while she finally gets her gem of a fixer-upper into shape — from doorknobs and chandeliers to leaky pipes to ghostly phenomena.

But when the charming and mysterious Jonathan Raines appears on her doorstep — and then just as suddenly disappears — remodeling the house becomes the least of Jake’s problems. Could Jonathan’s disappearance have something to do with his quest for a cursed violin — the one that local legend says was hidden by a long-ago owner of Jake’s house before he too vanished without a trace?

Soon Jonathan’s grief-stricken girlfriend arrives downeast, and Jake needs to strip Eastport’s past of its idyllic veneer — before a killer paints her very dead indeed!

Customer Reviews:

Another Excellent Entry in This Series

By P. Bigelow - August 18, 2001

This is the fourth entry featuring Jacobia Tiptree, former Wall Street financial advisor, recently retired to the small Maine town of Eastport. There she has purchased a fixer-upper, which at times, seems to be haunted, but certainly has a history. After an unknown person has plunged to his almost-certain death off the cliffs,she has to deal with a visitor from the City whom she may or may not have invited to stay with her and whom may or may not be who and what he says he is and seems to be interested in the age-old story of an unknown Stradivarius said to have been secreted away by her house's original owner.While Jake battles the house to keep it standing,she has to deal with this stranger, her 18-year-old son's infatuation with a girl Jake considers to be inappropriate, and,certainly not least, the ladies reading club is meeting at her house this month and her mysterious guest has knocked a hole in her dining room wall.Graves gives us a multi-faceted plot with several... read more

Is there really a treasure hidden in Jake's house?

By Moe811 - October 13, 2001

Jacobie Tiptree has a great deal on her plate just now. Her old house is still in the process of restoration, her exhusband still lives in Eastport, her son is seeing a girl she doesn't like, her ghost is unpredictable, and worst of all, a summer guest she doesn't remember inviting has invaded her home for the summer to finish his dissertation. At least, that is what he said he was there for. Jake believes that he is there to search for a Stradivarius allegedly hidden in the house by a former owner. Jake believes that this is merely a local legend and is incensed when her guest disappears, allegedly drowned, leaving a huge hole in her dining room wall just days before the local reading circle is due to meet in her home.The visitor's exgirlfriend Charmian arrives to bring home the body(there is none given the currents surrounding Eastport) and dives into the mystery herself. Jon Raines wasn't a graduate student, he was an adventurer who looked for lost treasures. Charmian's... read more

Wicked Good Reading

By Lawrence E. Wilson - July 30, 2002

Repair to Her Grave is the fourth tight, enticing paperback mystery, set in Eastport, Maine, and starring home-restorer, Manhattan-escapee, and general busybody Jacopia Tiptree. Her colonial-era house is falling apart, and possibly haunted, her ex-husband has moved to Eastport just to annoy her, her teenage son has taken up scuba-diving and emulating his father's philadering ways, and now various New York friends want to show up for the summer, including one who may or may not be looking for the legendary treasure hidden years ago by the very man whose unresting spirit may be haunting Jake's house...These are great reads, constantly deceptive, and I appreciate the way in which Graves doesn't sentimentalize the Down East socio-economic environment and the people of Eastport, but presents it as a modern place with modern problems, even if its history (and its residents' collective memory) does go back and back and back...She also manages some very funny moments (the ladies' literary... read more