Saturday, October 11, 2008

Mystery Book Review: Old Maid's Puzzle by Terri Thayer

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Old Maid's Puzzle by Terri Thayer. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Old Maid's Puzzle by Terri Thayer

Old Maid's Puzzle by
A Quilting Mystery with Dewey Pellicano

Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1218-3 (0738712183)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1218-5 (9780738712185)
Publication Date: September 2008
List Price: $13.95

Review: Quilting shop owner Dewey Pellicano has to juggle preparations for a major sale at her San Jose store Quilter Paradiso (QP for short), a minor family dispute, bickering customers, an unfulfilled personal relationship with her current boyfriend, and, oh yes, a dead body in the alley in Old Maid's Puzzle, the second mystery in this series by Terri Thayer.

The dead body is problematic if only because customers don't necessarily want to shop where the police are conducting an investigation and her store is adjacent to the crime scene. And Dewey desperately needs her upcoming sale to be a resounding success. She's nearly down to her last dollar, borrowing money from her life savings to pay for inventory, and paying volunteer staff with quilting supplies. Dewey doesn't know the man who died in her alley, only that it was terribly inconvenient of him to do so. The police think he was intentionally poisoned, probably murdered, but suspects are nonexistent. It isn't until Dewey happens upon a photograph of someone remarkably similar in appearance to the dead man that she begins to think that his presence near her store might not have been a random occurrence after all.

Though Old Maid's Puzzle is clearly entertaining, what with all the conflicts Dewey faces and her determination that each be resolved with a positive (or at the very least, not negative) outcome, readers expecting a mystery will have to be patient. Other than the discovery of a dead body, little of a mysterious nature happens for the first two thirds or so of the book. Unlike many of her amateur sleuth contemporaries, Dewey seems little interested in the unknown man found in her alley or in conducting her own investigation as to how he got there, focusing her attention on what's important to her right now this minute. In a way, it's a very refreshing approach for a cozy mystery to take. It also allows the author to develop apparently innocuous character relationships and apply subtle misdirection to the story so that when the mystery does kick in, much of what subsequently happens is so unexpected it's likely to catch readers off guard. One doesn't have to be a quilting aficionado or even know the first thing about quilt patterns to appreciate the mystery crafted by the author in Old Maid's Puzzle.

Special thanks to Midnight Ink for providing a copy of Old Maid's Puzzle for this review.

Review Copyright © 2008 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

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Synopsis (from the publisher): After her mother's unexpected death last year, computer-techie-turned-novice-quilter Dewey Pellicano is learning to love her new inherited role as proprietress of Quilter Paradiso. But when a dead body turns up in the alley outside the store, it scares off customers and threatens to sink an already precarious bottom line. To make matters worse, Dewey's resentful QP employee (who's also her sister-in-law) is undermining her at every turn, and now a con artist is preying on her long-time customers.

Steeped in debt and overshadowed by the second murder in two years, Quilter Paradiso, this last tie to Dewey's mother, is about to be cut for good. All Dewey's hopes are on the twentieth anniversary sale and upcoming landmark event — QP on national TV. With the help of her smolderingly hot detective boyfriend Buster Healy, can Dewey sew up the loose threads to this all-too-familiar deadly pattern and save her shop?

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