Murder, Plain and Simple (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)

Author:  Isabella Alan
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780451413635
Berkley Obsidian
368 Pages
$7.99; $7.99 Amazon
September 3, 2013

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With her snazzy cowboy boots and her ornithophobic French bulldog, Angie doesn't exactly fit in with the predominantly Amish community in Rolling Brooke, but her aunt's quilting circle makes her feel at home as she prepares for the reopening of Running Stitch.

On the big day, Angie gets a taste of success as the locals and Englisch tourists browse the store's wares while the quilters stitch away.  But when Angie finds the body of ornery Amish woodworker Joseph in her storeroom, the future of Running Stitch looks bleak.

With evidence mounting against her, Angie is determined to find the culprit before the local sheriff can make an arrest.  Rolling Brook appears to be a simple place, but the closer Angie gets to the killer, the more she realizes that nothing in the small Amizh community is as plain as it seems...

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Angie Braddock recently left Dallas, Texas because her late aunt left her a quilting shop, Running Stitch, in the Amish town of Rolling Brook, Ohio.  Her Aunt Eleanor married an Amish man and gave up her Englisch ways to join their community, and now the shop was hers.  To tell the truth, Angie didn't mind leaving, considering after a seven-year relationship, her boyfriend broke it off, telling her he couldn't commit to marriage.  Now she's in a new place with new people and trying to find her way.

It's also apparent that the woodworker next door, Joseph Walker, doesn't want her there.  He's insistent the shop belongs to his family and he'll find the deed her aunt hid to prove it.  But Angie stands her ground - and the next morning when she enters the shop, accompanied by Danny Nicholson, a reporter, she finds the body of Joseph in her storeroom, killed by one of her tools.  Now she's under suspicion of murder, and since the sheriff won't let her off the hook, she's determined to find the killer on her own.  But asking questions could be detrimental to her health - permanently...

This is the first book in a series, and I really wanted to like it.  Although many of the characters seemed authentic, I didn't think that the town trustees were all Englischers when this is supposedly an Amish town.  How did that happen?  Maybe things like that don't bother others, but I'm a great believer in details, and it's details that I pay attention to.

I also didn't care for the 'nemesis' angle.  Why on earth would anyone open a quilt shop directly next door to one that is obviously popular?  For the sole reason of taking away all the customers and forcing the Amish in the quilt circle to choose sides?  Nope; not interested.  I much prefer series where someone isn't out to ruin the life of the protagonist.  So if this continues in the next book - or even plays a major role - then I will stop reading (although I do like to give at least three books before I make a decision, the nemesis thing really irritates me in books.)

Then there was the ending, which didn't make sense to me at all.  Things the murderer did just didn't seem like they made any sense, but I have hidden this in a spoiler, because even though this is an older book, others may not have read it yet, so if you haven't read the book, please don't read the spoiler below:

1) How did the killer know that a property deed would be hidden in a quilt? Is this where all the Amish keep their important papers? I seriously doubt it. Yet for some odd reason, the killer knew that the quilt must be the hiding place when no one else even thought of it. 2) Why did the murderer keep the deed at all? What good would it have done them? Were they going to just show up with it after someone else was convicted of the murder like it appeared out of nowhere? How would they explain that little detail? It would have made more sense if they had just left the deed in Joseph's hand for Angie to find. 3) Since when do Amish people sew their important papers into quilts? Why would her aunt do that in the first place? If she wanted Angie to have the shop, wouldn't it have made more sense to leave the deed with her attorney to prove the shop belonged to Angie? This didn't make any sense at all. Because of these things, I had a hard time believing the ending. No one who wanted to prove ownership would just hide the deed in a quilt and then not tell the heir where the deed was unless they were crazy or didn't want the heir to know. I had a hard time not rolling my eyes at this.

Unfortunately, because of the way things were explained, nothing Angie's Aunt Eleanor did made any sense to me.  As I stated, I will read the next in the series, but there's no saying at this point whether I will even finish that book or not.  Sorry.

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Plain-Simple-Amish-Mystery/dp/0451413636/ref=

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3197769016

More on Isabella Alan's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/isabella-alan/