Maggie and the Black Sheep Yarn Shop regulars hie themselves away for a new agey spa and retreat weekend in this third installment to the series. As Maggie struggles to fill in for an instructor who backs out at the last minute, the rest of the crew experience the dubious benefits of rampant New Age encounter sessions and enough health food to choke a llama. They enjoy themselves more than they had expected, until a murder puts a pall over all the sweetness and light spouted by the organizers.
The owner of the Lodge is the charming and sincere Dr. Max, darling of the talk show circuit as he promotes his new book on getting what you want from life by leaving the past behind. After a moonlit night on a mini-camping event (meant to commune in meditation with 'Sister Moon'), Lucy and Dana awake to find the small clearing filled with a crime scene team, and one of the retreat participants being carried out of his hut in a black bag. Newly famous pop-psych guru with lashings of sticky sweet mystic banality Dr. Maxwell Flemming 'Dr. Max' is either the intended victim or the prime suspect. It's difficult to tell which. There are plenty of people willing to kill him, and even more reasons for him to keep someone quiet, permanently, as it comes out that not all the facts he lists in his bestselling book have anything to do with reality.
Canadeo stays true to her readers by keeping the sense of sisterhood alive and well in A STITCH BEFORE DYING. She has written a reasonably good mystery with the familiar characters' stories kept front and center. Cozy fans can look forward to an enjoyable read.
Stitching it together . . . The Black Sheep Knitters: a fivesome with a knack for knitting—and for solving crimes. hen Maggie Messina, owner of the Black Sheep Knitting Shop, is invited to give knitting workshops at a Berkshires spa resort, she manages to negotiate a cottage that fits all five of the Black Sheep for what promises to be a weekend of knitting bliss. But while the friends are expert at counting stitches, they haven’t counted on murder. Guests and staff at the Crystal Lake Inn are as varied as a mixed bag of yarn, but most colorful is certainly the owner, charismatic self-help guru and former psychiatrist Dr. Max Flemming. The doctor may have told all in a revealing autobiography, but from his ex-wife to the widow of his former business partner—both employees at the inn—Max seems mired in shadows from his past. And when a killer strikes during a mountaintop retreat, the Black Sheep wonder what the good doctor might be hiding. The police seem to be following the wrong thread. But while Maggie’s workshops have given the knitters a unique view of the tensions at the little inn, can they make sense of a crime that is as complexly stranded as a Fair Isle sweater? When the killer murders a second time, the Black Sheep wonder if they’ve dropped a stitch and put themselves in mortal danger. . . .
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