Home Repair Homicide series. In spring, Jake (Jacobia) and Ellie were wondering what happened to the town snoop Harriet. Then a man claiming to have been the NY Policeman (Harry Markle) that found Jake when the building she was in exploded when she was around 4 or 5 yrs. old. Markle says he had been searching for Jake's father, who was believed to have caused the explosion. Markle also said he was retired after a man killed his girlfriend and stalemated Markle on a roof.
Many odd things started to happen in the town where 2 people were killed, Jake's son and girlfriend were injured, and Jake's husband Wade was injured. Harriet's body was found in a wall after a woman making a music video was electrocuted in a flooded basement.
Ellie and Jake couldn't figure out who done it. In the meantime, Jake needed to have the cellar walls fixed in her place, and a stone mason who had recently moved to town was working on it. Jake was a little suspicious of the stone mason.
Jake finally figures out that Harry Markle wasn't really Harry Markle - and she figured it out just before he was aiming a gun at her within her own house. Lian Ash, the stone mason, had left a gun in her pocket and came in at the last moment and shot the fake Markle. Then Lian admitted he was Jake's father. But fake Markle had captured Jake's ex, son and his girlfriend, and rigged a bomb on the son's sailboat with them on it. Lian was able to get the hostages off the boat, sailed the boat away, and jumped off the boat just before it blew up. Lian survived. Lian and Jake didn't tell everyone else that Lian was the father, not just yet.
I enjoy her books, having read a couple of others (awhile ago).