KILLER HEAT. By Linda Fairstein. Doubleday, 2008. 384 pages. $26 hardcover.

Killer Heat, like any good title, is a play on words. It refers to death by New York oven — the baking August temperatures that send the rich to the Hamptons or the Vineyard, and the poor to their fire escapes for a breath of nighttime air. Killer Heat is also a reference to an actual killer or killers and to the heat, slang for law, that hunts ’em down and brings ’em to justice.

Many of today’s top writers of thrillers have spent untold hours in the actual forensics and crime fields, and Australian doctor and bestselling author Kathryn Fox is one of them. Dr. Fox will be signing her new book, Skin and Bone, in tandem with the Vineyard’s own celebrated maestro of the legal and police procedural, Linda Fairstein for her latest, Killer Heat (see right), at Edgartown Books today, July 4, at 3 p.m.

The Island Community Chorus will open the 2008 season of programs at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs with a concert at 8 p.m. this Saturday, July 5.

The chorus of more than 100 voices, under the direction of Peter Boak and accompanied by L. Garrett Brown at the Tabernacle’s nine-foot Steinway piano, will present a program of music designed for the holiday weekend, music whose variety pays tribute to the richness of the American experience.

In the food industry, it’s all about the numbers.

Eight ounces in a cup. Three hundred fifty degrees to bake cookies. Seven o’clock dinner rush.

This summer, Austin Racine and Katrina Yekel are keeping track of one more number: 63. It is the number of days straight that Café Moxie — the Main street Vineyard Haven restaurant where they first met and fell in love and now own together — will be open for lunch and for dinner.

The African Artists’ Community Development project will be selling crafts from Ghana, Niger, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe on Tuesday, July 8, at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury from 5 to 9 p.m. Items for sale include baskets, woven grass ceremonial cloth, Tuareg silver jewelry, malachite jewelry, carved wooden bowls and salad servers, animal and human sculpture, brilliant khanga printed cloth and more.

The village of North Tisbury has long stood as a sleepy, rustic outpost at this Island’s midpoint. Beneath its tranquil exterior this summer are stirrings of a quiet revival in the neighborhood, as commercial, culinary and artistic endeavors are bringing new life to this State Road streetscape.

A stroll through the neighborhood can be the perfect antidote to noise and traffic congestion in the downtown areas. The walk draws visitors into the unrushed tempo of northern New England towns you find in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

The ninth annual fluke derby run by the Veterans of Foreign War Post in Oak Bluffs 9261 may be Saturday, July 12 and Sunday, July 13, just over a week away, but anglers are already out there harvesting the fish. July is fluke season for most anglers.

While there has been plenty of attention in the last month on striped bass and bluefish swimming around the Island, the fluke (summer flounder) fishery is alive and well in Menemsha and in parts east and west.

Friday, June 27: Hot and muggy afternoon. Temperature reaches the mid-80s. A gentle breeze in the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest. Bicyclists speed along the path. Daylilies and tiger lilies line the road in North Tisbury. Late-afternoon strollers on Main street in Vineyard Haven. Less hot. Fog late.

Frost Biters Conclude

Spring Sailing Season

The Frost Biters and Winter Guys concluded their successful spring sailing season June 19. Six boats turned out on a beautiful night.

With winds from the southwest at six to eight knots, the sailors raced from Nun 6 in the Harbor, around Can 23A off East Chop, then across the Harbor to Nun 4 off West Chop, and finished back at Nun 6.

Tom and Laura Welch finished first in Eastaway and Dan Culkin placed second in Magic Time. A guest boat, Aired, finished third.

Tuesday morning, Tisbury selectman Denys Wortman surveyed the old Tashmoo pumping station with his hands on his hips.

The place smelled like a damp basement, with dank cement and fresh cut plywood. Each step was accompanied with the tiny crunch of dirt and concrete pebbles. The ceiling was patchy. Flies orbited a hanging light fixture as the morning rays intruded through the broken window panes. White plaster flaked off the brick walls and a green mold seemed to have grown from the floor.