Thread Herrings

Who knew purchasing a threadbare needlepoint sampler at an auction could be so troublesome. In Thread Herrings by Lea Wait, Angie Clark joins her antiques dealer friend Sarah Byrne at an auction in Augusta. With no experience at auctions, Angie is cautious about how to proceed. She doesn't want to inadvertently raise her hand and buy something she didn't intend to.

 As she is looking around at the various lots, she discovers a sampler with a coat of arms on it - unusual because coats of arms usually were found in England, not in the United States. On a whim, she bids on it and wins the auction.

Once she has the opportunity to investigate it further back at home, Angie discovers a document dated from the 1750s behind the framed needlepoint work. It was a claim check for a child who had been left at a foundling home in England.

Her news reporter friend Clem talks Angie into going on TV to talk about the sampler. Next day, someone is dead. Then Angie starts to receive threatening emails telling her to mind her own business. When the post mistress tells Angie a stranger has been looking for, Angie begins to worry.

When fireworks are used to blow up her car, Angie knows she needs to stay hidden while she researches the Maine families involved. Someone is trying to hide a secret, but Angie reveals the secret thread by thread. An intriguing mystery with family pride at the center.

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Tightening the Thread

After searching for years for a family connection, Australian Sarah Byrne has found her uncle Ted Lawrence in Maine. In Tightening the Threads by Lea Wait, Ted plans to introduce Sarah to his children at his 75th birthday party.

Sarah asks her friend Angie Curtis to come to the party to support her when she meets the family. It's a busy day as the family begins to arrive. They misidentify Sarah as a housekeeper. None are friendly to her nor to each other, but Ted wants them to enjoy the weekend.

At the party, he introduces Sarah as his niece and he tells them he is planning to change his will. He plans to leave all his famous artist father Robert Lawrence's paintings to Sarah. Possibly worth millions, the three children are furious. He also reveals he has lung cancer and does not have long to live.

Needless to say he is right - the next evening at the clambake, he
falls ill and dies. Could he have eaten a clam from a Red Tide flat or was it murder? The family

seems more concerned that he hadn't changed his will rather than his death. As everyone searches for Ted's will tempers start to fray. When son Luke finds Jeremy trying to open the safe in Ted's office, he fires a gun into the safe to try to open it. The bullet ricochets and shatters a stained glass window.

Angie is worried about Sarah's safety and encourages her to leave the house. When more mayhem occurs at the house, Angie feels she needs to investigate. What her investigate reveals could make your head spin.

I very much enjoyed this latest in the Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries although I did miss the interplay between the Mainely Needlepointers and Angie's grandmother.

Down East again

For some reason, the last few mysteries I've read take place in Maine. Can't seem to get away from the area, but the books were good. One series is written by Lea Wait. Thread and Gone is the third in the series.

The lead character Angie Curtis is the director of her grandmother's embroidery company, called Mainely Needlepoint. When I first met Angie, I did not warm to her, but as the series continued, I found her more interesting. In this book she and her cohorts have been asked to determine if a piece of embroidery that was found in an old home could have been created by Mary Queen of Scots.

How could embroidery made by the Scottish Queen in the 16th century have found its way to Maine? Is there any truth to the rumor that one of the Clough family sea captains brought it back?

Angie takes the sampler to her attorney for safekeeping, but within a

day, the attorney is dead and the sampler is missing along with some valuable jewelry. When another person turns up dead, but with the jewelry, Angie is confused and concerned for the sampler so she begins asking questions of all those who knew about the sampler.

The Mainely Needlepoint group is an interesting array of characters. There's a lobster boat captain, a high school science teacher (both males), an Australian antiques dealer, Angie's grandmother (newly married to the local minister), an erotic internet writer and several others. As I cannot needlepoint to save my life, I am fascinated by the amount of needlepoint they produce.

Here's hoping I have had my fill of Maine and can move on to another state!

The first book in this series is entitled Twisted Threads.