KNIT OF THE LIVING DEAD

When Little Bo Peep is murdered, a group of amateur sleuths wonder if the sheep was the real target.

Having solved several cases in Arborville, New Jersey, Pamela Paterson and her pals in the Knit and Nibble group are no strangers to murder. Pamela, her reporter friend, Bettina Fraser, and the older, more conservative Nell Bascomb are all attending a Halloween celebration when some teens find the body of a woman dressed as Bo Peep with yarn wrapped around her neck. Nell thinks the victim is her neighbor Mary Lyon, who she knows had made the costume for her husband, Brainard, to wear while she accompanied him as the sheep. But the dead woman was not the prickly, unpopular Mary, who, after a fight with Brainard, gave away the Bo Peep costume and went alone as the sheep. Which woman, ask Pamela and her friends, was the killer really after? After identifying Mary as the more likely target, each of them uses her own skills and local knowledge to track down clues and interview the people who had most reason to dislike her. The subsequent murders of Mary and her husband leave no doubt that the first death was a matter of misidentification and make it ever more difficult for the sleuths to separate the sheep from the goats in a herd of possible killers.

Lovingly detailed descriptions of food overpower the mystery in this cuisine- and character-driven cozy.