Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Fleece Navidad-Maggie Sefton

Fleece Navidad
Maggie Sefton
Berkley, Oct 2008, $23.95
ISBN: 9780425223604

The holiday season has come to Fort Connor, Colorado. Kelly Flynn and her friends befriend the newcomer who has come to the House of Lamb craft shop to socialize. Claudia Miller has moved from Florida to look for husband number four and she thinks she has found her man in Jeremy. Claudia is unaware that he was seeing librarian Juliet Renfrow before she arrived in town; Juliet remains heartbroken.

Another stranger arrives in town, the daughter of Claudia’s third husband; she starts spreading rumors that her “stepmother” killed her three husbands. She did her own investigation and found that Claudia took the car and the credit card of the woman living in the same retirement home complex with her. Claudia insists the woman gave them to her; Sheila claims she stole them and the family is considering pressing charges. They cannot ask the woman as she died of natural causes. Jeremy proposes to Juliet who says yes. However, Claudia is in deeper criminal trouble when someone deliberately kills Juliet in a hit and run and the polic think she did it.. Everyone condemns her except Kelly who believes someone has woven quite a yarn that she plans to unravel one thread at a time.

Maggie Sefton has written a charming Colorado cozy with an eccentric cast who’s off beat humor has the audience chuckling for the most part. Readers are unsure if Claudia is black widow killing a rival or the victim of a clever person; the evidence mounts increasingly towards the former. In fact most fans and the House of Lamb group will believe Claudia is a killer; her only doubter Kelly begins to agree as everything she finds affirms that theory. Fall in the Rockies sounds like fun when Ms. Sefton is the hostess as her latest amateur sleuth FLEECE NAVIDAD is an engaging Rocky Mountain High.

Harriet Klausner