Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Quick and the Thread-Amanda Lee

The Quick and the Thread
Amanda Lee
Obsidian, Aug 3 2010, $6.99
ISBN: 9780451230966

After her fiancé dumped her just prior to their wedding and bored with her accounting job in San Francisco, Marcy Singer accompanied by Angus the Irish Wolfhound move to Tallulah, Falls, Oregon. Her college roommate Sadie Mackenzie and her husband Blake own the store Mackenzie Mocha. Marcy plans to open up an embroidery store The Seven-Year Stitch.

At the open house, the person who previously rented the space Tim Enright tries to talk to Marcy, but he creeps her out as she believes he is intoxicated. When Sadie, Blake and Marcy close the store for the evening, they hear a thump in the storage room, but they are so tired they ignore it. The next morning, Marcy finds Tim inside her store dead with writing on the wall for square fifth which she learns refers to a real estate fraud that wrecked the small town. She talks to her landlord Mr. Trelawney about what Tim wrote and he is visibly upset. Soon afterward he is shot. After visiting one of the people in prison over the fraud, Marcy finds out the leader of the scam is still free. She sleuths, which puts Marcy in the crosshairs of a killer with no mercy.

This intriguing amateur sleuth has evil hiding in a small town which seems serene on the surface. The heroine gets drawn into the investigation because the police chief refuses to believe the two murders are linked to each other and the fraud. So the two friends for life determinedly search for the killer to take back their town. The cast is solid especially the dynamic detectives, but what makes The Quick and the Thread riveting is their inquiry comes across as reasonable and plausible.

Harriet Klausner

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