Mainer’s short stories draw on hard times

Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books that are either by Maine authors, set in the Pine Tree State or have other ties.

SLOW MONKEYS AND OTHER STORIES, by Jim Nichols, Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburgh, 2002, 164 pages $15.95.

These very engaging and penetrating short stories feature men who are going through hard times of one form or another.

There’s the Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD; the amateur magician who gets out of jail only to think about jumping off the Bucksport bridge; the middle-aged son whose father is in a nursing home; the college quarterback who comes home to work in the mill when his knee gives out; the homeless man who watches as his friend dies of lung cancer and a would-be writer who takes notes.

More than a few of Nichols’ characters are obtuse when you come right down to it, but good-hearted and likable. They just seem to have clouds of doom about them – whether because they got tackled during practice or waited too long to declare themselves to their girlfriends or came home to find their wives being embraced by an old boyfriend. In spite of it all, though, Nichols finds a way to convey their basic humanity and their courage. In spare, colloquial prose, these stories remind us how much it takes just to keep on truckin’.

Nichols was born in Brunswick and lives in Thomaston; his experiences as bartender, taxi driver and waiter seem to have put him in touch with the heroism and humor of Maine’s working people – and his gifts as a writer have enabled him to bring those people to us. – Margery Y. Irvine

UNHINGED, by Sarah Graves, Bantam Books, New York, 2003, 272 pages, $19.95.

Sarah Graves returns with the sixth installment in her “Home Repair is Homicide” series, as her intrepid “Snoop Sisters,” Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree (the former Wall Street broker) and her best friend, Ellie (a wily native), struggle to solve another murder in Graves’ adopted hometown of Eastport (which has to be the bloodiest location east of Cabot Cove).

In “Unhinged,” a local busybody disappears, causing not much of a ripple in the Down East community. But before that mystery is solved, Jake and Ellie discover that it’s tied to a larger scheme ensnarling Jake’s extended family, a retired New York City cop, a music-video director, a shady environmental tour operator, his assistant, a handyman new to town, the matriarch of a large, local clan, and, possibly, a serial killer who’s come out of hiding.

The light of suspicion falls on all these during Graves’ labyrinthine but fast-paced tale, which holds a couple of whopping surprises at its end. Throughout, the author has sprinkled her trademark series of home-repair tips that she’s learned while renovating her own 200-year-old Federalist home.

While her mysteries may be among the few that could be adapted as movies for HGTV, they have a quirky charm that should appeal to many. “Unhinged” shows Graves has built a strong structure for an enduring series. – Dale McGarrigle

THE HARBOR, by Carla Neggers, Mira Books, 2003, 384 pages, $6.99.

Did you love “The Secret of the Old Clock?” “The Haunted Bridge”? “The Clue of the Black Keys?”

For all of us who waited when we were 10 years old for Carolyn Keene to write another Nancy Drew mystery, take heart. Carla Neggers, in “The Harbor,” has concocted an intrepid girl detective who’s a 21st century Nancy Drew for grown-ups.

In a small town on the Maine coast, the chief of police, Zoe West’s father, has been murdered. Plucky but troubled Zoe, who left soon after the murder and has been under something of a cloud, comes home when her sister’s house is broken into. By the end of the book, she’s followed a series of clues, been shot at and held hostage, identified the murderer and fallen in love with a vacationing FBI agent who has helped her solve the puzzle.

What more could Nancy Drew fans want? Well, given the age of some of us, we could want a little steamy romance – and that’s what we get. No young virgin this Nancy! In fact, “The Harbor” is a sort of cross between a Harlequin romance and Nancy Drew, and just in case readers don’t want to work too hard, Neggers has made perfectly clear who the real villain is almost as soon as the book begins.

Maybe we could call novels such as this one “comfort books.” They don’t make any demands on us, they take us back to the days of our youth. And they aren’t fattening. – MargeryY. Irvine