About The Long Stitch Goodnight by Amanda Lee: Although she's taken an interest in Irish embroidery, Marcy Singer can't help but abandon her needlecraft when handsome local brewer Todd finds himself accused of murder. Both Todd and his friend Blake's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and neither is talking about what happened. Marcy is determined to stitch together some luck from more than a few four-leaf clovers and prove that the culprit was someone else...
My thoughts
I love a good mystery. I got started with Nancy Drew and moved on to Agatha Christie (who I think is an absolute genius).
And mysteries that are a mash-up with another genre, sure ... bring it on! I like oddball combinations - I always come away with great appreciation for something new and unusual. I welcome the unexpected. And I also am a bit of a crafter at heart, so bringing these two elements together sounded fun! So when I saw The Long Stitch Goodnight by Amanda Lee, a cozy mystery, was up for grabs in Goodreads First Reads, I wanted to give it a whirl.
This is the third book in the Embroidery Mystery in the series. I haven't read any of the past books so I don't have the benefit of knowing the characters. The titles are quite witty -- The Quick and the Thread, Stitch Me Deadly, Thread Reckoning -- they put a smile on face, and I guess they also upped the expectation on my end.
But as much as I tried, I couldn't get past that the embroidery aspect has absolutely no connection to the mystery. How disappointing. The only connection was that Marcy Singer owned an embroidery shop and it went on and on about Mountmellick embroidery. I kept waiting for the connection. It never came.
I could probably have looked past that if the mystery side was good, but that was so lackluster that I actually laughed at myself for even expecting it. The "mystery" was a version of a closed door murder: two men who could not possibly have committed the murder, holding the "smoking" gun. Marcy goes out and tries to find out whodunit; her sleuthing skills didn't exactly impress me - she was pretty straightforward about finding ways to talk to people. And sadly, I wasn't blown away by who the culprit was!
I think I will stick to Miss Marple (of Agatha Christie fame). She's an old cat, loves to knit, and is a lovable nosy Parker. I guess you could say she's a "cozy" sort of person, so my version of a cozy mystery would be anything Miss Marple-y. Sorry Marcy Singer, you don't do anything for me. I needed some meat to this mystery and I came away really disappointed.
Verdict: A quick fluffy read which did not satisfy the mystery-lover in me. A cozy mystery that wasn't very cozy, or very mysterious.
I received a copy of the book through Goodreads First Reads.
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