Murder for a Worthy Cause - Neal Sanders
Murder for a Worthy Cause takes place in the little boutique town of Hardington, MA. The town is under the spell of a televised home improvement program called Ultimate House Makeover. The show is hosted by the flashy star—Whit Dakota. While Liz Phillips, chair of the Hardington Garden Club is setting up the landscaping for the new house, a body is discovered in a trunk of spare tent parts. The body belongs to a town selectman who was in charge of the volunteers for the project, and Liz is commandeered to replace him.
Detective John Flynn of the Hardington Police Force is charged with solving the crime. Although both Liz and John are married to other people, a bit of romantic tension hovers throughout the book as the two work together. Sanders adds some interesting touches, such as the fact that there is a famous New England Patriots quarterback named Tom Snipes (the book was published in 2012) living in Hardington. That pseudo-famous identification brings out an interesting aspect of the bad guy in the story, Whit Dakota, who demands to play catch with the famous star to promote his own reputation.
Sanders develops the plot well—starting out slowly with Detective Flynn trying to put the pieces together and sort through multiple suspicious characters.
Liz Phllips, meanwhile comes across what seems to be a wholly unrelated crime that paints a seamier side of the home makeover TV phenomena. It seems like an interesting but irrelevant plot development until Sanders brings the plots and the Liz and John Stories together. That was a gratifying and pleasant surprise.
Sanders provides depth and color to his characters and is able to provide flavor to the town of Hardington (Sanders says it was modeled on Medfield, MA), its location in Massachusetts, and the reality show industry. Suspects develop from the complexities of normal human relationships: lawyers, gardeners, volunteers, and filmmakers. And all of that happens before the family around whom all this is evolving comes back to the town and the story.
Amazon has this listed under Mystery, Thriller, Suspense. The mystery and suspense work, the the thriller category doesn't fit. But it is a great read and an intriguing plot.
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HERS Scores & Gas Leaks
I have been at this building science stuff for over 40 years! I was looking at when organizations like the Building Performance Institute (BPI 1993) and the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET 1995) started. They are both well established organizations. In fact they've been around long enough to be institutionalized—like you can't do stuff in this industry without running into them. BPI certifies the wonderful folks that perform the energy audits on existing houses, testing for air leakage with their blower doors and gas leaks with their combustion analyzers.
RESNET supports the HERS raters that test new houses and provide energy efficiency information to architects and builders. 1 in 4 new homes built in 2020 got HERS ratings. The HERS score is based on 100 as a basic code built home. States have been using HERS ratings to push energy efficiency. Massachusetts now requires a HERS score of 55 which is 45% more energy efficient than a code built house. The lower the score the more efficient the house. Houses are scoring regularly under 20 these days. And some actually score less than 0 which means they supply all the energy they use, and if it goes below zero, they actually produce extra energy!
Getting a HERS rating is not some sort of random process. The raters who generate those numbers have to know a lot. The technologies are changing remarkably fast. It's a whole lot different from when I used to go out and measure houses, do the calculations on my calculator, and type up the report on my typewriter! But if you have thoughts about buying a new house, ask about the HERS rating. If it doesn't have one, ask about getting one.
I want to turn back to the BPI building analysts. One of their tasks is to test for gas leaks. When I was doing it regularly, about 80% of the houses that I tested had a gas leak. Most of them were very small, but enough for my analyzer to detect them and occasionally big enough for me to get the homeowner to call the gas company and shut things off. All of those leaks are contributing to the methane in the atmosphere—contributing to climate change. Those guys in the crawl spaces seeking gas leaks are the first line of defense. So when you have an energy audit done on your house, be sure to thank them.
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