Vineyard Shadows

May 7, 2001
Mundane domestic activities play as big a part as duplicitous drug dealers or menacing mobsters in Craig's latest leisurely Vineyard mystery (after 2000's Vineyard Blues) featuring ex-Boston cop J.W. Jackson. When two brutes from South Boston appear at J.W.'s island home and terrorize his wife and stepdaughter, J.W. takes matters into his own hands—anything to safeguard his family and keep his beloved Vineyard from infestation by Boston's criminal element. While local authorities would rather J.W. leave the investigation to them, he uses long-time contacts to try to discover who ordered the inexplicable attack. Readers might wish they could see more of this well-etched coterie, which includes a crime reporter and a former federal agent. Mostly, though, J.W. plays stay-at-home dad. He gardens and digs clams with his children, riffs repeatedly on beer, offers cooking tips (three recipes are appended), drops learned allusions (to Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson and Frost) and drifts into banalities about the weather, marriage and life's ups and downs, some of which would make worthy entries in the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest ("she finally let herself cry and cry, cleaning the windows of her soul"). One clue stands out like a McDonald's golden arch in the middle of colonial Edgartown, but J.W. fails to notice. He shows a similar lack of imagination and street smarts in not getting the big picture until long after it should be obvious to most readers. Now that Cynthia Riggs has entered the Vineyard mystery arena with Deadly Nightshade
(Forecasts, Apr. 23), Craig may no longer be able to afford coasting on tried-and-true formula.

May 1, 2001
Sleuthing ex-cop J.W. Jackson finds that wife Zee has been forced to kill an intruder at their home. The dead perpetrator and cohort were actually looking for the husband of Jackson's first wife, so Jackson suffers from divided loyalties: should he help Zee through her trauma or save his first wife from impending pain? Another winner in Craig's "Martha's Vineyard" series.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2001
Craig's Martha's Vineyard mysteries are full of local color, and J. W., his wife, Zee, and their two small children are deeply engaging, quirky characters. The relatively quiet pattern of these cozies is utterly shattered in the first chapter of this one, as Zee and her daughter are roughed up by a couple of thugs in a terrifying scene that ends in Zee killing one of the attackers and incapacitating the other. The thugs, it turns out, were looking for the second husband of J. W.'s first wife, Carla. J. W. becomes involved in the case while struggling with a host of unruly feelings about Carla. Zee is wrestling with her own demons, trying to reconcile her view of herself as mother, nurse, and crack shot with her nightmare vision of herself as a killer. Far more emotional texture here than in past series entries, but there is still the endearing patter of small children and the offhand succor that residents of small communities offer each other.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)