STITCHED IN CRIME

An amateur sleuth refuses to accept the story that a young woman committed suicide.

The craft fair where retired nurse Lia Geiger sells her wares is well on the way to recovering from a recent murder, and her daughter’s new job and romance with a police officer are going well. Lia’s new neighbor at the fair is Cori Littlefield, a shy young woman with a prodigious talent for crocheting all kinds of unusual items. After a newspaper article popularizes Cori's booth, she slowly begins to open up to Lia. When Lia visits Cori, who’s recently moved into her mother’s spacious home in Crandalsburg, Pennsylvania, she accidentally sees a disturbing crocheted scene of a woman dead at the bottom of a hill, and Cori becomes very upset. When Cori’s found dead at the base of a waterfall, Lia doesn’t buy the suicide theory. At the wake, Lia meets Cori’s half sister, Robin, but not their mother, who’s currently in a nursing facility following a car accident. Learning from some friends that Cori had a recurring nightmare about falling from Long Run Falls, where Jessica, her childhood babysitter, died, Lia begins to investigate that cold case and realizes that it may have been a murder and that all the suspects are still around. The police listen sympathetically to Lia’s theory but have no hard evidence that would spur them to reopen the case. Instead, her knitting friends help her track down clues, putting her in danger from a killer who’s now good and spooked.

Relatable characters with everyday problems boost an average mystery.