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DIED IN THE WOOL
by Mary Kruger
Pocket Books, August 2005
320 pages
$12.00
ISBN: 0743484738


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

DIED IN THE WOOL is (presumably) the first in a series featuring Ariadne Evans, owner of Ariadne's Web, a knitting shop in the small coastal Massachusetts town of Freeport.

Ariadne gave up her promising designing career when she got married and became pregnant. Thinking the big city no place to raise a child, she and husband Ted moved back to Freeport.

A few years later Ari is now a divorcee with a seven-year-old daughter called Megan. She has her own shop and is selling her own designs and the business is going reasonably well until one morning she opens her store to discover the dead body of a customer, Edith Perry, who has been strangled with yarn homespun by Ari's best friend Diane.

Initially the suspect list is quite small, limited to the people who had keys to Ari's store but as it becomes apparent that, unknown to Ari, all and sundry had access to a key, the list becomes quite lengthy. There are plenty of motives too, as Edith was not well liked. She was due to buy Ari's store and if the rents were hiked up then Ari's business would fold. Also, Edith was planning to develop the land next door to Diane and her husband Joe's farm, with the possibility of water contamination threatening their livelihood.

The man in charge of finding the killer is town newcomer Detective Josh Pierce. Initially he suspects Ari but trusts his feelings that she's not the murderer. Ari feels she's been targeted -- why was the murder carried out in her store? She asks Josh if they can team up to find the killer, an alliance which continues even after Josh has made an arrest based on the available evidence. Josh and Ari decide the best way to cover their working together is to pretend to be dating, but how much of it is acting?

As a knitter and cosy fan, I was very much looking forward to this but in the end it left me feeling disappointed. Part of the problem was that I guessed the identity of the killer quite early on so that took out the suspense of the story. The Ari and Josh collaboration didn't work for me either, they told each other occasional snippets but I never felt that Ari was actively investigating.

Overall I found the story a bit flat, a bit of a cosy by numbers, with no real sense of place. I didn't warm to any of the main characters except for Josh who came across as conscientious and level-headed even though he jeopardises his career by teaming up with Ari. The, as yet unknown, reason for his move from Boston to a small town, could make for an interesting story in a future book.

NB. There are several easy knitting patterns included at the back of the book.

Reviewed by Karen Meek, July 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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