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First Light is the first novel in the J. W. Jackson series that Philip R. Craig and William G. Tapply co-wrote, with Craig's longtime Vineyard detective J. W. Jackson teaming up with Tapply's Boston lawyer Brady Coyne. The collaboration uses the Vineyard setting that Craig had been developing for decades and the legal procedural Tapply had been refining alongside, and the result is the kind of comfortable regional mystery that the form occasionally produces well.
The Vineyard texture is the pleasure. Craig writes the island the way longtime residents write the places they cannot leave, with the specific patience that the form sometimes manages. The case is competent. The interaction between Jackson and Coyne carries the book.
Three stars. A reliable regional cozy. Recommended to readers who like their mysteries set on actual islands with actual seasonal economies.
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