Book Review No.18: A Deadly Yarn (A Cosy/Cozy)

It's time to get cosy again and this time we're heading back into the realms of what I consider to be a 'true' cosy/cozy with this series which is set in modern-day USA - Fort Connor, Colorado, to be more exact.

This is the third in the Kelly Flynn [Knitting] Mysteries series. I read the other two (Knit One, Kill Two and Needled to Death) back in 2012 before I struck on the idea of reviewing books on here; it seems I wasn't altogether taken with the first in the series, but gave the next one a go as I already had it on the book shelf. Clearly the second one can't have been too bad as I decided that number three was worth a try too.

Kelly Flynn is a book-keeper who moved to Colorado on the death of her aunt in order to help sort out the aunt's estate. She ended up staying rather longer than anticipated and, wouldn't you know it, helped to solve the mystery of her aunt's death (book one) and a further death (or was it two?) in book two. By book three Kelly is feeling settled in Fort Connor, especially when she is spending time with her newly-acquired friends at the knitting shop-cum-cafe next door, and it seems that the money she has inherited from her aunt will enable her to give up the tele-commuting job in Washington DC and make a permanent home in Colorado.

We get all the way to page 23 before a body turns up in this book; it's Allison DuBois, an up-and-coming artist who is just hours away from setting off for a new life in New York. Kelly and her friend Megan go to visit Allison at her apartment and find her dead; immediately Kelly goes into sleuthing mode. She seems to be able to find out things that the police don't, or come up with ideas and suggestions that the professional detectives didn't think of, which does make this story even more implausible than many of the other cozies I've read (yes, I know that makes it sound like some cozies are actually 'believable', but I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm trying to say.) Eventually, after several false starts - is it the angry ex-boyfriend, the art gallery owner, the competitive student - on page 255 Kelly unmasks the killer (in front of the police, no less) and all is good in Fort Connor once again; the knitters can get back to knitting, playing softball and having barbecues at alpaca ranches and Kelly can continue to bat away the affections of local builder Steve, all the while looking after her great lumox of a dog, Carl.

 While I was reading this book I didn't mind it at all, but now I look back on it I can see just how weak it really was (and that's saying something in the world of the cozy.) I'll probably read some more in the series simply because they are in the bookcase and I'm sufficiently interested in Kelly, her friends and her lifestyle (I'm sucked in every time she wanders over to the knitting shop/cafe for a strong coffee and an hour or so of knit one, purl one) to want to know where things go from here, but there are other cozy series that I enjoy a lot more than this, so I don't think I would recommend starting out with this one, if you happen to be new to the world of cozy crime. There are many better places to begin.