Shadows of a Down East Summer

February 21, 2011
Wait's engaging fifth Antique Print mystery (after 2005's Shadows at the Spring Show) takes antique print dealer Maggie Summer to fictional Waymouth, Maine, where her plans for relaxing with her boyfriend, Will Brewer, and visiting Will's Aunt Nettie get derailed. Enlisted to examine a recently discovered diary kept in 1890 by 18-year-old Anna May Pratt, who posed for Winslow Homer, Maggie inherits the diary after someone bashes in the head of its owner, Carolyn Chase, with a rolling pin. As Maggie once again turns amateur sleuth, she comes under pressure from locals who believe the diary could reveal long-kept secrets about the famous artist and his relationship to their community. Wait, herself an antiques dealer who lives on the Maine coast, does a good job depicting smalltown Maine and recreating 19th-century journal entries.

February 1, 2011

Maggie Summer (Shadows on the Coast of Maine), antique print dealer and an expert on 19th-century American art, is given the diary of a woman who may hold the key to a local dispute involving the artist Winslow Homer in Waymouth, ME. One of the ladies belonging to the historical society thinks that Homer fathered a child in her husband's family. VERDICT This gentle regional mystery involving the art community in Maine will appeal to readers of Jane K. Cleland and Sharon Fiffer.

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