My author has always created stories about me based on real-life events she’s either read about, seen on the news, or experienced. For instance, in Guilty as Framed, the eleventh book in the series, she wove a plot around the actual 1990 unsolved museum heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston. To this day, it’s the largest theft of artworks in history and none have ever been recovered.
A Crafty Collage of Crime, the award-winning twelfth book in the series, was inspired by her move in 2021 from New Jersey to Tennessee. Many of our readers wanted to know when I would also move to the South, but being a diehard Jersey Girl, I dug in my heels and threatened to kidnap her muse if she dared transplant me. We compromised by Lois sending me on a trip to Tennessee wine country (yes, it’s a thing) and, of course, within hours of arriving, I stumbled across a dead body.
In Seams Like the Perfect Crime Lois once again gave me one of her own experiences, this one involving some very odd neighbors who used to live across the street from her back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These neighbors were so odd, that Lois didn’t have to do much in the way of embellishing what she saw from her own window. When you read the short synopsis of the plot, your first reaction will be, she had to have made up those people. Trust me, she didn’t.
Well, she did make up some of the tertiary characters in the book, and none of the real-life characters were ever murdered, but many of the characters in this book are a perfect example of truth being stranger than fiction.
Seams Like the Perfect Crime
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 14
When staffing shortages continue to hamper the Union County homicide squad, Detective Sam Spader once again turns to his secret weapon, reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. How can she and husband Zack Barnes refuse when the victim is their new neighbor?
Revolutionary War reenactor Barry Sumner had the odd habit of spending hours mowing a small patch of packed dirt and weeds until his mower ran out of gas. He’d then guzzle beer on his front porch until he passed out. That’s where Anastasia’s son Nick discovers his body three days after the victim and his family moved into the newly built mini-McMansion across the street.
After a melee breaks out at the viewing, Spader zeroes in on the widow as his prime suspect. However, Anastasia has her doubts. There are other possible suspects, including a woman who’d had an affair with the victim, his ex-wife, the man overseeing the widow’s trust fund, a drug dealer, and the reenactors who were blackmailing the widow and victim.
When another reenactor is murdered, Spader suspects they’re dealing with a serial killer, but Anastasia wonders if the killer is attempting to misdirect the investigation. As she narrows down the suspects, will she jeopardize her own life to learn the truth?
Craft projects included.
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