Murder by Artifact

September 21, 2009
In Graham's quirky second quilting mystery to feature Sheriff Marc Antony “Tony” Abernathy (after 2007's Murder by Serpents
), what appears to be the stabbed corpse of Queen Doreen, the despised wife of the mayor of Silersville, Tenn., turns up under a “murder quilt” (an antique quilt with bloodstains). When Doreen appears at her own funeral, folks realize the victim is actually Doreen's look-alike half-sister. Meanwhile, Tony's wife, Theo, who owns Theo's Quilt Shop, has found skeletal remains behind her best friend's house, and a dying tipster has informed Tony that a female serial killer is on the county tax rolls. In addition, a rash of garden gnome thefts has the down-home locals in a tizzy. Cozy fans with a taste for tongue-in-cheek humor will enjoy the wacky crime solving. Quilters will welcome the pattern of “a mystery quilt” attributed to Theo, “Night on the Mountain.”

October 1, 2009
Small-town sheriff Tony Abernathy deals with murder, robbery and a kidnapping a lot closer to home than he'd like.

The theft of lawn ornaments isn't a high-priority crime until one of the suspects, the mayor's unpopular wife Queen Doreen, is found murdered at the work site of the new local history museum founded by Tony's mother and aunt. Now Tony has a full plate: the thefts, a murder and a batch of anonymous letters and old newspaper clippings he's received about a series of alleged murders stretching back 20 years. Eventually the sender meets him at a baseball park and reveals who killed these victims and where he can find the bodies. Unfortunately, Tony can't get a search warrant on hearsay evidence. When Queen Doreen turns up alive and furious at her own funeral, Tony discovers that her wealthy father engendered an illegitimate daughter who was murdered instead of the mayor's wife. Tony's wife Theo, already busy with her family, her quilt shop and her occasional sleuthing, is getting strange visits from Vicky Parker, a high-school classmate nobody remembers with fondness. When Theo is kidnapped, Tony has to rescue his wife from a deranged killer, in addition to figuring out who killed Doreen's double and stole those ornaments.

The most baffling puzzle Graham (Murder by Serpents, 2007) poses here is what the mystery quilt (instructions included) will look like. But her tale is peopled with amusing characters.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2009
The murder of the mayor's wife in the artifact museum owned by Sheriff Tony Abernathy's mother and aunt throws the town of Silersville, TN, for a loop. VERDICT This blend of quilting clues and down-home humor is for those who like Bill Crider, Monica Ferris, and other writers of small-town cozies.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.