Moon Spinners

March 29, 2010
In Goldenbaum's delightful third knitting mystery (after 2009's Patterns in the Sand
), Izzy Chambers, proprietor of the Seaside Knitting Studio, and assorted knitting group friends gather for dinner at the Sea Harbor Yacht Club in Sea Harbor, Mass., to celebrate fund-raising efforts for the new community center and park. Special thanks are due two local construction companies, Santos and Delaney, which have been working together despite the uneasy relationship between the two families. The sudden appearance of drunken Julianne Santos, who threatens her brother, Alphonso, with a beer bottle, interrupts the dinner. Gracie, Julianne's daughter and the estranged wife of Joey Delaney, wishes she, Gracie, could disappear like Alice down the rabbit hole. Later that night, Alphonso's aloof, beautiful Argentinean wife drives her Ferrari off a cliff. Tampered brakes signal murder. Well-drawn characters and an intriguing plot lift this well above the average cozy.

May 1, 2010
The third installment in the Seaside Knitters series may have readers wondering why dead bodies keep turning up in the idyllic Massachusetts fishing village and art colony where the action takes place. This time the corpse belongs to patrician Sophia Santos, whose Ferrari has gone off a cliff. Although billed as a knitting mystery, theres more detecting than purling going on here (though a hat pattern is included). The cast is overly large (and names confusingly close, e.g., Ella and Stella), but the knittersincluding wise Nell, her niece and knit-shop owner Izzy, and octogenerian Birdiemake for an appealing and comfortably cozy coterie of sleuths.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)