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A bat in the Belfry

Graves, Sarah. Book - 2013 Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / Cozy / Graves, Sarah 1 On Shelf No requests on this item Community Rating: 4 out of 5

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Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / Cozy / Graves, Sarah
On Shelf At: Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length Call Number Checkout Length Item Status
Westgate Adult Books
4-week checkout
Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / Cozy / Graves, Sarah 4-week checkout On Shelf

When a local teen beauty-pageant winner from a troubled family is found murdered in the beloved 200-year-old Seaman's Church steeple, Jacobia Tiptree, while preparing for an epic nor-nor'easter, must wade through the rising waters of gossip and suspicion to find the truth.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

easy summer read submitted by avalade on July 15, 2013, 7:59pm This is the first I've read in this series. The characters were interesting, violence wasn't too grizzly. This was an enjoyable summer mystery and a very quick read. I will be reading more from this series.

More like a crime drama than a mystery submitted by eilusk on August 3, 2022, 9:49pm This book felt weird, because the aesthetics of the book being so thoroughly themed around the home improvement thing (each chapter starts with a quick DIY tip from the main character) led me to expect a pretty typical cozy mystery. The book ended up being a lot more focused around interpersonal drama/crime drama than trying to catch the killer. The main character Jake Tiptree only narrates like half the book at most, and she spends way more time worrying about the incoming storm and the mysterious newcomer character than investigating. Incidentally, the mysterious newcomer Lizzie Snow felt WAY more like the main character than Tiptree. At the end of the book, that character drives off into the sunset in a way that made me wonder if this book wasn't a "backdoor pilot" for a series about her. (Ha! I just looked it up and I was right!)

Also, the content was way more graphic and dark than a typical cozy mystery. It wasn't like, super egregious (I don't think anyone who has read something like In Cold Blood would find it too much) and the roughest sections were relatively short, but it was off-putting when I wasn't expecting it.

It's hard to judge this book because I accidentally grabbed the /last/ book in the series... even if this sort of series is generally meant to be possible to enjoy out of order, I think it's fair for the very last book to be kind of confusing for a newcomer. And like I said, it wasn't really what I was looking for when I picked it up. But even putting that stuff aside, it seemed just kinda okay-ish to me. Also I hated Lizzie Snow's love interest because I hate liars and manipulators, so that was pretty frustrating.

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SERIES
Home repair is homicide mystery
16.



PUBLISHED
New York : Bantam Books, 2013.
Year Published: 2013
Description: 293 p.
Language: English
Format: Book

ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780345534996

SUBJECTS
Tiptree, Jacobia (Fictitious character)
Women detectives -- Fiction.
Beauty contestants -- Crimes against -- Fiction.
Dwellings -- Maintenance and repair -- Fiction.
Eastport (Me.) -- Fiction.
Mystery fiction.