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CREWEL YULE
by Monica Ferris
Berkley Prime Crime, October 2004
245 pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0425198278


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

You can't get much cosier than being snowed into a hotel just before Christmas while attending a needlecraft convention, the setting for the eighth Betsy Devonshire mystery.

Betsy is attending the annual cash and carry market staged by the International Needlecraft Retailers Guild in Nashville, Tennessee with Godwin LeDuc from her shop in Minnesota, when the snow descends, trapping them in the hotel together with their friend Jill Larson. Jill is a police sergeant who is supposed to be attending another event in town. Nashville isn't used to snow and everyone has to play a waiting game for supplies to arrive and for anyone to leave.

Saturday morning starts very badly as Betsy sees one of the attendees at the market, Belle Hammermill, topple screaming off the ninth floor balcony into the atrium of the hotel. It's not a pretty sight but Jill takes charge together with the formidable hotel manager Marveen Harrison who is keen for the opportunity to prove her worth to the hotel's owners in a time of crisis. It's hours before the beleaguered local police can get to the scene and remove the body and they are happy to let Jill investigate for them. But Jill is a desk sergeant and knows Betsy the amateur sleuth is the person to really find out what happened.

Jill and Betsy combine visits to the various wholesalers and the hotel bar and restaurant with investigating Belle's life and soon determine that she was a seriously flawed woman with a bunch of enemies -- but did any of them kill her, or was it suicide or an accident?

CREWEL YULE will appeal mostly to people who enjoy needlecraft and in this respect it's a particularly interesting read as the book refers to a lot of well-known designers and manufacturers who gave their permission to be included. It was very interesting to get some idea of them as real people, and to wonder whether their portrayals were accurate or might be a joke. I found myself taking notes of the names of some designers I hadn't heard of previously so I could look them up on the internet later.

The mystery itself was pretty easy to figure out although as it neared its conclusion the author did manage to make me wonder if I'd jumped (or been pushed!) to the wrong conclusion. If these alternative possibilities had been outlined a little earlier on I think the book would have been stronger.

I have not read the previous books in this series, which starts with CREWEL WORLD, and it didn't seem to matter, probably because it is set away from its usual location in Excelsior, Minnesota. I will definitely be reading more of the series, and hoping that the mystery element is a little stronger in them, but confident that I'll find a well-written story with an interesting craft theme.

Reviewed by Bridget Bolton, November 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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