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WREATH OF DECEPTION
by Mary Ellen Hughes
Berkley, September 2006
272 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0425212246


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

After a disaster in New York all but ruined her life – her husband, a sculptor in metal had incinerated himself when an acetylene torch he was using misfired – Jo McAllister has returned to Abbotsville, Maryland, where she has put every penny of her insurance money into Jo's Craft Corner, a shop that will sell craft and knitting supplies and offer workshops in wreath-making, scrapbooking, and knitting.

Jo is naturally nervous on her opening day. To lure customers she has hired Chuckles the Clown to pass out flyers. Jo does not know that the grouchy clown is an out of work actor who is filling his time playing clowns and working at the local playhouse while waiting for his call to become the next Brando or Pacino.

When Jo goes back to her storeroom, where Chuckles (real name Kyle Sandborn) has been changing, she finds him dead, stabbed with one of her knitting needles.

As she works to clear herself of suspicion of murder, she becomes involved in a secondary plot with her best friend Carrie, Carrie's husband Dan, and their truculent teenage son, Charlie. Dan, who is very involved in coaching sports, can't understand why Charlie isn't interested.

So he is distraught when Charlie shows an interest in working at the local playhouse, where Kyle was starring in a less than mediocre version of Rapunzel. As Charlie becomes more and more fascinated with the intricacies of backstage work, Dan becomes more and more tyrannical, finally forbidding Charlie to have anything to do with the playhouse when the leading lady is found murdered.

The two main characters are very well written – Jo with her conflict between investigating two murders and keeping her shop going and Carrie, torn between her macho husband and her desire to see her teenage son take his own path. Charlie is the character who shows the most growth, going from a sullen, stay-in-his-room-and-play-video-games teenager to one who becomes genuinely engaged in a project.

The scrapbooking crew at Jo's Craft Corner are also a vivid bunch, especially the bossy but delightful retired teacher, Ina Mae, and Deirdre, the ambitious state senator's wife, who fancies herself a future first lady.

The plot moves fluidly, only occasionally bogged down in instructions on card making, which I doubt would be useful to most readers.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, October 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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