Review: Winter At the Door by Sarah Graves

Lizzie Snow, an experienced homicide detective from Boston, has come north to the farthest reaches of Maine to take a job in a small town where the sheriff is concerned about a string of suspicious deaths among former police officials.  We quickly learn that Lizzie is there only because she's looking for her missing niece, although we never quite seem to find out much about this missing girl.

In the meantime, the plot thickens as Lizzie settles into small town, winter-time life in rural Maine.   I've enjoyed Sarah Graves' "Home Repair is Homicide" series set in the same general locale, and actually thought this one was better written.   The characters are edgier and more sketched in, and the place descriptions are spectacular.  However, the plot really became very much like the runaway logging trucks that are the stuff of legends in the Maine wilds.   Way too much going on with no brakes on the wild ride.  We had little vignettes of quirky town characters, we had Lizzie fending off two suitors, both too good to be believed and too edgy to be comfortable about.   We had those suspicious suicides, out of control teenagers, and mysterious bad guys running around unnoticed.

I actually couldn't put it down because I had to see how all of these pieces would ever come together.   Graves does a reasonable job of tying up loose ends, and gives us a real kick-a surprise at the end, but there is still laundry hanging on the line at the end.   I guess this is her way of making us wait for the second installment.   I think there's plenty of potential for a good series here.   Lizzie Snow is definitely a female character with lots of pizazz.  I just hope that Graves isn't going to do one of these series where we are forever hanging waiting for the heroine to decide who's sleeping in her bed that night.  Lizzie appears to be too smart to let that go on for long.   Let's hope so anyway.

Title: Winter at the Door
Author: Sarah Graves
Publisher: Bantam (2015), Hardcover, 272 pages
Genre: Mystery - police procedural
Subject: murder and mayhem
Setting:Fictional town of Bearskill Maine
Series: Lizzie Snow #1
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers program
Why did I read this book now? I was given a review copy by the publisher.