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Rebecca Hurley, a college friend of Lucy's, has recently opened the Happy Hands Café in Plum Harbor. On the night Colin Hurley is murdered, Rebecca has hosted a class on "The Art of Argyle," given by Maggie Messina, owner of The Black Sheep and Company Knitting Shop. All the Black Sheep regulars are there, and stay for dessert after the class. Lucy, on one of her frequent trips to "The Ladies," overhears an argument between Rebecca and Colin. The next morning, on her routine trip into town to sit and relax at Maggie's, she encounters a police presence around Happy Hands. Colin is dead, crushed by one of the large bookcases in the café.
It doesn't take long for the police to figure out that Colin was murdered. All the (obvious) clues point to Rebecca. Lucy was not the only witness to the previous night's altercation. Rebecca's car was on surveillance camera tape, sitting in the back parking lot during the window of opportunity. Motive? Colin was planning on divorcing Rebecca and leaving the country, taking his daughter Sophie with him. Rebecca is the only mother Sophie has ever known, and Rebecca loves Sophie like the child she'll never have.
Lucy and her Black Sheep buddies refuse to believe that Rebecca could or would ever kill anyone. They set about trying to figure out the not-so-obvious. It turns out there are people who don't like Colin. At least one co-worker from his previous job has plenty of motives. The other writers in a group that Colin was basically kicked out of also have reasons to wish him gone on a more permanent basis. Not to mention the guy on the black motorcycle who tried to run Colin off the road recently. Who was he, and why did he try to kill Colin? Even in her last month of pregnancy, Lucy has time and energy to devote to this project; it is certainly easier in her mind than knitting a baby argyle sweater for the prospective Binger-MacDougal baby.
Canadeo has written a dozen other mysteries, all with some connection to knitting. There are two patterns and a recipe at the end of ARGYLE. One pattern is for the more experienced knitter, and the other is for someone willing to push the envelope of stranded knitting just a little bit. With all that writing experience, it comes as no surprise that ARGYLE is a good mystery. The characters are fleshed out, even some of the more peripheral folks. Any small town would work as well as Plum Creek; the nuances, good and bad, of living that kind of life are explored without being overwhelming. The killer was unexpected (at least for me), although looking back the clues were there for the perspicacious reader. All in all, a great book for reading on a nice summer's day. It is available on Kindle, so in theory, one could listen to it and knit at the same time.
§ P.J Coldren: I have been reading and reviewing mystery fiction for over a quarter of a century and read broadly within just about all genres and sub-genres. I live in Northern lower Michigan with my spousal unit, one large cat, and two fairly small dogs.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, June 2022
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