Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree traded her power-broker life for a
run-down dream house in peaceful Eastport, Maine. But the
do-it-yourself enthusiast is learning that no matter how
carefully you build your home, murder has a way of slipping
in through the cracks…
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!