Thursday, August 11, 2011

Thread Reckoning-Amanda Lee

Thread Reckoning
Amanda Lee
Obsidian, Oct 6 2011, $7.99
ISBN: 9780451234551

Marcy Singer left California when her fiancé David Frist jilted her on their wedding day without telling her he got cold feet. She moved to quaint Tallulah Falls, Oregon where she opens up The Seven Year Stitch embroidery specialty shop.

Cassandra Wainwright enters the store wanting Marcy to add embroidery to her wedding dress that would include fake jewels given to the bride by her future mother-in-law Francesca Ortega. Marcy’s boyfriend police officer Ted Nash awakens her late at night with news of a dead female outside her establishment. Marcy identifies the body as Francesca. She explains about the dress and the jewels; the police confiscate the gems as evidence only to learn they are genuine. The victim’s son Francisco insists he has no idea how his late mom possessed real jewels, but that it might have involved her job at former job at Santiago, Inc. The matriarch of the Santiago clan reported her jewels stolen, but her son Frederic knows his mom was not a thief. Experienced in solving homicides (see Stitch Me Deadly), Marcy investigates one stitch at a time so that she can figure out what led to Francesca’s murder.

This charming cozy contains a difficult to solve homicide because no one seems to have a viable motive. While the protagonist investigates (a sub-genre hazard of amateur sleuthing for no reasonable reason) she deals with David who obstinately wants her back and refuses to accept no. His arrival and desire has his ex musing whether he is connected to the murder, the theft or both as he worked for the Santiago family. Readers will enjoy Amanda Lee’s likable whodunit.

Harriet Klausner

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