Cast On, Kill Off

April 30, 2012
Preparing for a wedding can be murder, as shown in Sefton’s middling 10th knitting mystery featuring Fort Collins, Colo., financial consultant Kelly Flynn (after 2011’s Unraveled). Kelly, a bridesmaid in the upcoming wedding of two friends, comes to the aid of seamstress Zoe Yeager after Zoe’s abusive husband makes trouble and Zoe’s former employer swears that Zoe stole her bridal gown design and customer list. Kelly barely gets Zoe settled into a women’s shelter before the poor woman is found murdered. Kelly once again turns amateur sleuth while juggling work and rekindling a relationship. Everyone takes an absurd interest in Kelly’s sex life or lack thereof, which leads to many “sly grins” and much juvenile innuendo. Most readers will easily figure out the killer’s identity, and Kelly’s delay in passing along vital information to her police contact will strike many as less than credible. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds.

May 15, 2012
A Fort Connor bride's path to the hymeneal altar is impeded by several crises that befall her friends, her fellow knitters and her seamstress, including the latter's murder. Kelly Flynn might have known it was a bad sign when Zoe Yeager finished sewing the perfect bridal gown for her friend Megan Smith and all the bridesmaids' equally fetching dresses a full three weeks before the wedding. Item: Megan's sister Janet, her matron of honor, can't fit into her dress because she's suddenly pregnant. Item: The triangular wedding shawl Kelly's knitting to match all the other bridesmaids' shawls (pattern included, along with three recipes) keeps shrinking on one side. Item: Zoe is shot to death shortly after finally leaving her abusive husband, Oscar. The Fort Connor police naturally fasten on Oscar as their prime suspect, but Kelly, whose accounting business never seems to engage her full attention (Unraveled, 2011, etc.), wonders about Leann O'Hara, the rival seamstress who burst into Zoe's class the night she died to accuse her of stealing a prizewinning bridal-gown pattern from Leann. And there are other problems to worry about too. Will Zoe's sister, Vera Wilcott, be able to rescue both Megan's wedding and Zoe's business? Will Kelly's sometime boyfriend, architect Steve Townsend, ever make the move from friends-again to lovers-once-more? And who'll win Kelly's climactic showdown with a blond hussy that seems to have been sneaked in by some rewrite man who hopes the movie will feature a knockdown bar fight? Not to worry: Megan's wedding goes off without a hitch; Kelly gets her man, or vice versa; and somewhere along the line the cops arrest Zoe's killer. Whew.

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June 1, 2012

Will Megan's wedding go off without a hitch, or will intrepid Kelly Flynn need to step in? When the seamstress is murdered, the group gets to work. Number ten in a popular cozy series (Unraveled).

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2012
Kelly and her friends return for their tenth adventure as they prepare for Megan's wedding. When wedding seamstress Zoe Yeager asks for their help to leave her abusive husband, the friends drop everything. Then, when Zoe is found dead from a bullet wound, Kelly is sure that Zoe's husband is the killer. But Zoe made people angry, including designer Leann O'Hara, who confronted Zoe about a stolen design the night of the murder. Kelly and the rest of the cast continue to entertain as they knit, discuss personal troubles, and dabble at sleuthing. The disaster of Kelly's knitted bridesmaid shawl provides humorous background scenes here (a pattern for that shawl is included). Readers may be able to identify the killer midway through the book, but there are enough surprises to keep the mystery moving. The main stage here is saved for the wedding plans, which fans of the series will appreciate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)