Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425252970; 9780425252673
Kensington Publishing
304 Pages
$11.43; $13.40; $7.99 Amazon
November 4, 2014
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Molly and her friends can't wait to get people hooked on crochet at the annual Southern California Knit Style Show. This year, for the first time ever, the knitting show also features crochet, including crochet classes and a crochet competition.
The show's organizer is K.D. Kirby, publisher of several knitting magazines and owner of an elite Beverly Hills yarn store. Concern when K.D. doesn't show up for the opening reception turns into shock when she's found dead in her hotel suite.
Suspicion falls on Adele, one of the Tarzana Hookers, who locked horns with K.D., and whose handmade crochet hook is found at the murder scene. Certain that Adele has been framed, Molly starts her own investigation, hoping to get their pal off the hook and find a killer before another guest checks out...
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Molly Pink works as an event coordinator for a local bookstore. She's a widow, with several pets and two grown sons. Things are moving around her, as she's tasked with running the booth for the bookstore at a trade show. She's got help (if you can call it that) from her co-worker Adele, and friends in her crochet group at the store.
She's also decided that celebrity attorney Mason Fields is the man she wants in her life, but so far, they've both been busy with their careers and haven't found any time to spend together. But since one of his clients is in trouble and at the show, he manages to get a few minutes now and again to see her.
The person organizing the show is K.D. Kirby, a self-absorbed publisher of knitting magazines and owner of an upscale yarn store that has a "knitting salon" in which her wealthy customers sit and knit together. She's not fond of crochet, and isn't fond of Adele, whose over-the-top style is being put forth in the booth, and they have an argument regarding it.
When Molly goes to meet K.D. a while later, she finds her dead, and is immediately drawn into the investigation when she discovers that the police have their eyes on Adele as the main suspect. When Adele begs her for help, she can't turn her down; but at least she has her best friend Dinah as her 'Watson' to Molly's 'Holmes.'
The more Molly investigates, the more she discovers that K.D. had plenty of enemies. More than enough people wanted her out of the way, and any one of them had the opportunity to go to K.D.'s suite and kill her. The only thing Molly can't figure out is the exact timeline that would free Adele. But when she gets closer to answers, someone is watching her, and it might be Molly whose life is now hanging by a thread...
I have been reading this series intermittently for a few weeks, and so far I've had mixed feelings on it. While she's gone from a relationship with homicide detective Barry Greenberg, they broke up because his job came before her. Now she's entering a relationship with Mason Fields, who seems more stable, and Molly enjoys his company. So that's settled, right? Hmmm...
When Molly starts investigating who might have wanted K.D. dead, Adele figures that since Molly's on the case, she can go on with her life, which means she's not concerned with anything but Adele -- and her boyfriend Eric, who's a traffic cop. And, of course, his mother...
But with so many people at the show, she has problems narrowing down who might want the woman dead the most. Each person had their own reasons for wanting her out of the way, and Molly is determined to figure out who, if she can just stay under the radar from the police. But that's not going to be easy to do when Barry is shadowing Adele through the weekend, waiting to see if she's going to flee or stay put.
When Molly finally figures it out and the killer is revealed, I felt that there were clues throughout the book. I pretty much had figured out who the murderer was early on, but it was still interesting to wait and watch while Molly figured it out herself. When the ending comes and everything is put together, we discover that the motive is one of the tried-and-true throughout time, and will probably be so again. This book was easy to read in one sitting, and the ending, while leaving us curious, gives us something to look forward to in the next book. Recommended.
More on Betty Hechtman's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/betty-hechtman/
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