Middle Sister's December Reads

December was a busy month, but I had two weeks of vacation and was looking forward to reading, and reading a lot. And I did. And it was wonderful! I hunkered down and spent good quality hygge time in my want-to-be-home, Sea Harbor, MA. But tragedy struck December 8--my beloved Kindle Voyage died! Amazon made the wrongheaded decision 4 years ago to cease production of the Voyage, even though many of us Kindle diehards thought it was the best Kindle ever made. I tried to live without a Kindle but broke down within  a week and ordered an Oasis, which will be delivered soon. I hate reading on my phone, so most of the books read this month were audiobooks or library books. A Net Galley ARC was interrupted by the tragedy, but I will resume reading Comet Madness as soon as Fred the Fourth arrives.

A Dark and Snowy Night by Sally Goldenbaum Years ago this series was published by one of the mass market publishers, and I fell in love with it when I discovered it early on. After several books, the publisher decided not to pursue the series, but luckily for us, Kensington Publishing picked up the author and the series continues. Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, is a small coastal town, but it's home to a large number of great businesses I'd patronize if they were real. Chief among them is the Seaside Knitting Studio, owned by Izzy Chambers Perry. The series began years ago with Izzy opening up her yarn shop and over the books, she knits deep relationships with three women in town. They are all very different, in age, in lifestyle, in experience, but they bond over their shared love of knitting and their lives become interwoven. Over the series, their lives change, but the friendships and love stay strong. I would love to be best friends with Izzy, Nell, Birdie, and Cass, and have Thursday night knit-ins and Friday night dinners with them. The mystery is almost secondary for me. I love escaping to this cosy, beautiful town full of caring and conscientious people and set in a gorgeous, sea side locale. But, a mystery series this is, so someone does get murdered, and each investigation is spearheaded by a different woman. I had just read two of the Seaside Knitters mysteries in November, and I didn't want the happy glow of living in Sea Harbor to dissipate, so I immediately jumped into my third consecutive book, which is also the most recent. This time around, the mayor's holiday party is marred by a murder, and the victim is discovered by Nell, Izzy's aunt (and personally my favorite of the four women). With Christmas and the holidays looming, the women decide to solve the murder so the town can enjoy the festive season without worrying that a murderer lurks in their midst. I love this series, and passed this book on to a friend to read on her vacation, and she is now a convert and fan, too. What better way to celebrate the season than with this wonderful trip to my favorite place.

Black Orchids by Rex Stout This audiobook has two stories, Black Orchids and Cordially Invited to Meet Death. As all fans know, Nero Wolfe never leaves his townhouse, but the one thing that might get him to leave his home is a rare orchid, and this is not just a special rare orchid, it's a black orchid. When Archie Goodwin discovers a dead body at a flower show, Nero is drawn into a complex mystery that centers on an exceedingly rare little bloom. The black orchid reappears in the second story, in which a society matron receiving poison pen letters tries to get Nero Wolfe to find out who is sending the letters to her. Wolfe turns down the job, and then regrets it. This audiobook is literally just the old cassettes now in a digital format, complete with "end of cassette 1, please turn the cassette over." But the wonderful Michael Prichard and his gravelly voive are perfect for Nero Wolfe, so less than perfect presentation aside, I love these audiobooks.

The Capture of Cerberus and The Incident of the Dog's Ball by Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot read by David Suchet. There is nothing more to be said. Perfection.

Knot on Your Life by Betty Hechtman years ago, I gave up on Hechtman's other series because, as detailed in other reviews on this blog, the stories are simplistic, the writing often juvenile, and the mysteries unsatisfying. But, sometimes it's hard for a reader to know if some of the fault lies with the publisher, who demands a certain kind of mystery for a certain audience, and constrains the author with requirements and limitations. So when I found that Hechtman had another series out there, I thought I'd give it a try. Casey Feldstein has created a career arranging yarn retreats in Vista Del Mar, but the resort idyll is not without its evils. In this, book number 7, her nemesis, the resort manager, has started arranging retreats, trying to poach on Casey's success, but his attempts leave his first clients, a Silicon Valley tech company, unsatisfied, and they reach out to Casey to save their retreat. But it's not a restful retreat when someone dies, and Casey decides to solve the murder herself. Gentle Reader, I had so many issues with this book, it's hard to list them, but here are some, and they are my last straw pet peeves: why does Casey think she is a better detective than the police, because she worked as an assistant to a detective long ago? Why on earth does her boyfriend, the cop, tell her things that could get him fired if his boss knew he was telling her these things? Why does she let him do this? And why the heck is a 30-something woman afraid to date a man in the open? Does she really think the locals will gossip nonstop about them? Casey, you're neither that important nor that interesting. The juvenile romantic relationships Hechtman always has make the bad mysteries absolutely unreadable for me. It's insulting to Ms. Christie and Mr. Stout to read something like this right after reading their classic and well-written mysteries.

AlterKnit Stitch Dictionary: 200 Modern Knitting Motifs by Andrea Rangel Fantastic stitch dictionary of modern and unusual motifs for the adventurous knitter who wants to move beyond diamonds  and chevrons into dinosaurs, robots, and 3-D inspired motifs, among others. This is a great addition to any knitter's library. Nicely illustrated, but only charts.

And there you have it. The 69 books I read in 2022. On to 2023 and adventures with my new Oasis.

Middle Sister's Mid-Month Review

One for the Hooks by Betty Hechtman

Many years ago I read the first couple of books in a then-new crafty mystery series by Betty Hechtman. Members in a crafting forum I was a moderator at were very excited because this series was centered around crocheters; most of the fiber craft mystery series featured knitters. I wasn't too impressed by the series, so after two or three books, I gave up. But I recently came across the latest in the series and thought I'd give it another try. Sometimes an author needs two or three stories to hit their stride, and I thought that might be the case here. 

I was wrong. The character and the story were even worse than I remembered. I hate to pan a book, much less an entire series, but I really can't do otherwise here. Ms. Hechtman is now writing 3 or 4 different series, and their output always suffers when authors start writing this much. That may be the problem here. Or, it may just be that this series is bad. I'm not going to try her other series to determine which is true.

The main character, Molly Pink, works in a bookstore as assistant manager and event coordinator. In addition to book groups, she's organized a group of crocheters who meet regularly in the bookstore. In the first book, she became romantically involved with the police officer investigating the murder. At some point, they broke up and she started seeing a lawyer. In this book, Molly has to face her attraction to both men. Barry the police officer has moved on and is dating again, and Mason, her new boyfriend, has asked her to quit her job to work with him, and told her that he wants to marry her. She is attracted to both men and strings both of them along. She is jealous of and snide toward's Barry's new romantic interest to his face. She makes derisive comments about Carol using a home meal delivery service because she (Molly) doesn't need pre-packaged ingredients to make a meal. What gourmet meal is Molly preparing while she's mocking Carol? Scrambled eggs.  Haute cuisine. She lies to Mason about her feelings for Barry repeatedly. 

Molly's behavior to Barry is juvenile and offensive. She constantly accuses him of being constipated emotionally (as if a police officer can let his emotions be visible to all). She agrees to help him investigate what looks like an accident but may have been intentional. Barry tells her that he will contact her as she is assisting unofficially, and she becomes petulant when he doesn't call and angry when she calls him and he doesn't want/can't to talk to her. Hmm, Molly, maybe he's at the police station and will get in trouble if it becomes known he's working with you? She answers every question he asks about the case with a question, refusing to answer until he practically begs for it, then diverts the conversation into accusations about his emotional self-control, and then finds his impatience with this childish behavior objectionable. Rise and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. By the third identical conversation with Barry, this was tedious. 

Her personal behavior is also objectionable. She steals keys and breaks into two houses, she withholds information, she repeatedly tells the reader that Barry and the police can't do their jobs so she has to solve the crime for them. She acts as if they are Keystone Kops bumbling about, and doesn't consider that her behavior not only impedes their investigation, but could cost them a conviction in a court of law if they try to rely on her fraudulently obtained information.  She prides herself on being a better investigator than professionals yet gets physically locked in an easement because she doesn't think to check the lock. Yet later, when she needs to get out of that same water easement area, she finds a different gate/door that is the only one that doesn't lock like all the others, and guess what? It just happens to be the gate to the murderer's house.

Other unbelievable coincidences abound, like jogging a computer awake with her elbow and being able to access all the files because it's not password protected (really?). She can answer a cell phone without seeing the name on the screen (how is that possible when you have to touch the screen to answer the call?). A book group regular just happens to be a neighbor of the woman where the murder occurs. The final coincidence, which ties the murderer into a separate subplot, was one too many and made me want to scream. There are inconsistencies in the story. After hundreds of pages around a key plot element--a neighborhood is angry that a resident wants to start letting her house be used as a vacation rental a la VRBO, after the resolution to the murder suddenly the entire neighborhood signs up with that homeowner to star in a reality television show about short term rentals. So the idea of a short term rental house next door was horrible until they could make money off the situation? This flies completely in the face of the personalities of neighborhood characters, all of whom had been suspects and therefore were recurring characters throughout the novel.  

The plot has been completely ripped from recent headlines with no attempt made to disguise it. The book is an amalgamation of lazy writing techniques, unbelievable coincidences, and unlikeable characters, and makes for an annoying reading. I actively disliked Molly by the end of the story. She is irritating, annoying, juvenile, self-centered, arrogant.

So I won't be giving this series another try. I suggest you avoid it, too.