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Vineyard Chill is the nineteenth Jeff Jackson mystery from Philip R. Craig, with the Martha's Vineyard ex-cop investigator working a winter-season missing-person case. The off-season Vineyard setting (the closed restaurants, the year-round residents, the specific quiet of the island when the tourists are gone) is rendered with the careful affection of a writer who knew the place intimately.
Craig's strength in Vineyard Chill is the seasonal texture. The Vineyard winter geography, the small year-round community politics, and the specific household rhythms of Jeff's family life all carry the book even when the plot machinery is conventional. Fans of Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone series or Steven Hamilton's Alex McKnight Michigan mysteries will recognize the regional procedural register.
The case resolves with appropriate small-island misdirection. The closing chapters earn their melancholy.
Three stars. A reliable late-series Vineyard cozy. Recommended for readers who like their mystery fiction set in actual real geographies. The Vineyard Chill Philip R. Craig novel is best read with some familiarity with the earlier Jeff Jackson books; new readers should start with the earlier series entries.
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