Off Season - Hardcover

Craig, Philip R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684196174 ISBN 13: 9780684196176

Publisher: Scribner, 1994

Synopsis

It's the off-season on Martha's Vineyard. Hot summer had faded to cool autumn, and one hundred thousand tourists have packed up their towels and beach umbrellas and headed back to the mainland. Finally, the locals have their beautiful island to themselves.
J.W. Jackson couldn't be happier. The former Boston cop had envisioned this sort of leisurely island lifestyle when he opted out of the fast track and relocated to the Vineyard. He enjoys his fall days fishing and scalloping at the choicest spots on the beach, and in the evenings, he cooks succulent gourmet feasts for his fiancee, Zee Madieras. But with the tourists gone, the locals have time to concentrate on their own lives - and on old antagonisms, like the long-standing quarrel between hunters and animal rights activists. The off-season is also hunting season, and it's not long before tempers start to flare. When an activist shoots a notoriously obnoxious hunter with a water pistol filled with blood-red dye, J.W. fears that worse is to come.
Evil invades the idyllic setting just as the locals prepare for an island Christmas. A body is found, pierced by a hunting arrow, but the innocuous victim, neither hunter nor activist, is the last person anyone would have expected. Soon J.W. is thrust into a particularly nasty case as he treks across the island's winter land - and seascapes, encountering troubling aspects of island life that summer people - and even most of the locals - never imagine.
With clever writing, sharp wit, and a captivating setting, Philip R. Craig's Off Season is a superb addition to a series that delights readers everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Philip R. Craig is associate professor of English at Wheelock College in Boston.

Reviews

As fisherman/sleuth J. W. Jackson gets increasingly adept in the kitchen, this Martha's Vineyard series brings Martha Stewart to mind, but the fun remains as Jackson proves he can still finger a murderer as deftly as he opens oysters. At issue here is 50 acres of land, coveted by hunters and animal-rights activists. Although the loud-mouthed leaders of both groups seem destined for homicide, the man who dies is an eccentric recluse with few enemies, a surprising way with the ladies, some strange sexual aids in his cabin and a bow and arrow, which is the weapon that kills him. The victim's link to the land squabble is his friendship with the daughter of an animal-rights supporter whose husband has political aspirations. Meanwhile, the hunters' spokesman is attacked by a thug linked to organized crime. Jackson has his hands full: hunting down scallops, cooking up batches of kale soup and staying on an even keel with Zee, the girl of his dreams and soon-to-be wife, if their attacks of nerves don't skuttle the pending nuptials. He also has to find the killer, which he does quite handily. Although Jackson verges on smug, the beauty of Craig's ( The Woman Who Walked into the Sea ) New England settings seem to justify his hero's pride in his soup, his boat, his girlfriend and his own, considerable charm.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ex-cop J.W. Jackson's idyllic engagement to Martha's Vineyard nurse Zee Madieras, and his ritual bouts of fishing and scalloping and cooking and eating, are interrupted by a feud between animal- rights activist Mimi Bettencourt and hunter/editorialist Ignacio Cortez over the proper use of the 50-acre tract that wealthy Carl Norton has just sold to a public commission; by a couple of run-ins with uncouth Providence hoodlum Joey Percell, who warns Nash Cortez to lay off them animal-rights people; and by a slight case of murder. The corpse is Chug Lovell, Carl's no-account neighbor and rumored tobacco heir. As usual, J.W. (Cliff Hanger, 1993, etc.), hired by improbably swinging lawyer Heather Mainwaring to find out who killed the man she was swinging with, never falters in his stream of breezy banter and prosy homiletics, not even when he's questioning the other women Chug had also enticed into sexual submission and then blackmailed with his photo albums. A pinch of mild mystery--J.W. seems to have learned his craft not from the Boston PD but from a mail-order course, and the local law is two or three lessons behind him--to a double helping of recipes and cozy charm. It must be off season for crime and punishment too. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684196174
• ISBN 13: 9780684196176
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288