Yarn to Go (A Yarn Retreat Mystery #1)

Author:  Betty Hechtman
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425252215
Berkley Prime Crime Publishing
294 Pages
$6.19; $7.99 Amazon
July 2, 2013

⭐⭐⭐⭐

When Casey finds out that her late aunt's business, Yarn2Go, has one more yarn retreat scheduled, she decides to go ahead and host the event, despite her complete lack of experience as a knitter.  At least she'll be on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula.

But the idyllic setting is soured when a retreat regular is found murdered in her hotel room.  Feeling a sense of responsibility, Casey begins to weave the clues together and detects a pattern which may shed light on her aunt's suspicious death.  Despite the danger, the last thing Casey plans to do is retreat.  She'll catch this killer...or dye trying.

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Casey Feldstein hasn't been able to complete anything in her life.  It's particularly disturbing to her parents, who are both doctors.  But Casey now lives in Monterey, due to the fact that her Aunt Joan passed away and left her both her home and the carriage house behind it.  She's happiest when baking, and has managed to become dessert baker for the Blue Door restaurant, while also making muffins and breads for neighboring businesses. 

But Casey doesn't believe Joan's death was an accident, even if the police label it so, and isn't about to let it go unchallenged.  Still, she's surprised when one of her bosses calls her about a credit card bill his wife has -- paid to one of Joan's yarn retreats.  When Casey looks into the matter, she discovers it's nonrefundable, and with no other choice, she decides to go ahead with the retreat.  But she also finds that the attendees have problems of their own, the manager of the hotel they're staying is breathing down her neck to turn the retreats over to him, or the fact that one of her neighbors happens to be a very hot cop who -- she thinks -- is running orgies out of his home; nor the fact that there now appears to be a murderer in their midst -- and is might just be one of her guests.  Now Casey's faced with more than solving her aunt's murder...she just might be the next victim...

This is the first book in a series I haven't read before, and as such, I really enjoyed it.  I liked the fact that our protagonist was a different sort - she didn't run from a cheating boyfriend, she isn't dead broke, etc.  It's a refreshing change.  The problem lies within Casey herself - she can't decide what she wants to do with her life.  In the meantime, she finds happiness in baking, so that's what she does.

But she also doesn't believe Joan's death was an accident, and she wants answers, ones the police don't have.  So while she's out of her comfort zone running her aunt's retreat, she's trying her best, even though she's determined that this will be her one and only time.  She at least has a friend at the retreat in Lucinda, her other boss at the restaurant. 

I liked the fact that the characters weren't just cut-out cardboard.  We were given backgrounds on them, and the reasons they were there.  It was nice to see that each one had their own story to tell, and gave this tale a bit more meat to it.  While I realize that this is the first book, I hope to see in the others at least more of these people.  I also liked the fact that while Lieutenant Borgnine was all business, he wasn't nasty to Casey nor threatened her.  I do get tired of cops being just plain nasty to the protagonist.

In the end, when the killer was revealed, the clues were there all along, but as the book progresses they became more apparent, so while you think you might know who the murderer is, you fully discover it just before Casey herself.  Nicely done.  I look forward to the next in the series.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Yarn-Go-Retreat-Mystery/dp/0425252213/ref=

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3234643070

More on Betty Hechtman's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/betty-hechtman/

Silence of the Lamb's Wool

Author:  Betty Hechtman
Genre:  Mystery

Five Stars

Dessert chef Casey Feldstein has learned one end of a knitting needele from the other after inheriting her aunt's yarn retreat business, but a murder threatens to unravel her latest event...

Casey's running a new retreat called "Sheep to Shawl" at a resort on the atmospheric Monterey Penninsula.  Participants will learn about sheepshearing, fixing up the fleece, and spinning, and will eventually knit a lovely shawl.

Nicole Welton has been hired to teach the fleece-to-fiber portion of the retreat.  She's an expert spinner, and her small shop in Cadbury by the Sea houses a beautiful assortment of spinning wheels and drop spindles.  But when the new teacher fails to show up for class and is found lying dead on the boardwalk, it leaves everyone's nerves frayed.

Now Casey has to knit together clues faster than she can count stitiches, before someone else at the retreat gets dropped...

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Casey Feldstein lives in Cadbury by the Sea, having moved there after a failed run of semi-careers.  While her mother wants her to go to culinary school, because she knows Casey loves to bake, Casey has other ideas.  She has inherited her aunt's business of running knitting retreats, and wants to keep doing it.  So, in her latest retreat, her hiree, Nicole Welton, is found dead the first morning, of what is an apparent suicide.  But Casey thinks things don't add up, and although she can't convince Lieutenant Borgnine that Nicole was murdered, she herself is convinced and won't give up trying to find a killer.

But this may not be as easy to do as she thinks.  Given free reign of Nicole's workshop by Nicole's grieving widower, Will, she finds bits and pieces of what might point to blackmail.  When she starts thinking back of things she's seen, and begins to see things around her differently, she starts to piece together the whole picture.

To make matters more complicated, her crush on Dane, her policeman neighbor, is halted temporarily when she finds out there's a woman staying with him; a replacement knitting instructor has appeared out of nowhere; Cora Delacorte has become engaged to a smarmy man; and there has been another attempted murder - which only convinces Casey she was right all along.

This book was engaging indeed, and quite difficult to put down, so I just kept on reading until I finished.  Casey is intelligent, and thinks things through, which I like; but no one really seems to want to take her seriously except her friend Lucinda, whom she bakes for.  She is different in that she doesn't just rush off on tangents putting herself in danger, and I really like that a lot.  It's nice when you find a main character who actually has the foresight to think of a way out of a situation before she puts herself in a situation.  An excellent read and highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Lambs-Wool-Retreat-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00HDMMF56/