Have you ever wondered why so many cozy mysteries revolve around food or knitting or gardening or bookstores? Why isn’t a plain old murder enough? Who needs herbs or bamboo needles or a trowel when you have a dead body?
I explored the question with the four protagonists in the seaside knitters society mysteries, Izzy, Cass, Birdie and Nell, and I wondered how they’d be different if they didn’t knit, if they were simply “the seaside women.”
Here’s what I think:
I think the knitting provides a centering for their friendship, and has been instrumental in how it has grown. Izzy’s yarn shop is a place to bring Nell, Cass, and Birdie together regularly. It gives them a ready-made place to interact, to gossip, to develop their friendship in new ways. In How to Knit a Murder, the knitting room even provides a place to welcome a newcomer to town. To knit her into their lives. And to help her when she is accused of a horrible murder.
Knitting also provides a metaphor for the way Nell, Birdie, Cass, and Izzy think. As they knit a pattern, they carefully and methodically knit together the pieces of a puzzle—a body in a mansion, a new woman in town, scandals reborn in an online newsletter, high school secrets, once buried, brought to life: all pieces knit together to solve a murder.
And lastly, yarn is simply so tangible and visceral and sensual that it provides a feeling that can soften the harshness of murder and at the same time heighten and stimulate the senses. It injects a sensuousness into the mystery, just like writing about food does. Sinking ones fingers into a basketful of Izzy’s buttercup yellow cashmere yarn, for example, or savoring Nell’s garlic grilled shrimp salad with fresh flakes of basil sprinkled on top—and clinking together four glasses of Birdie’s chilled pinot gris—are sure ways to stimulate and sharpen the senses and help the knitters of Sea Harbor explore the intricacies of murder.
Although readers of the seaside mysteries won’t learn to knit as they join Izzy, Nell, Birdie, and Cass on a Thursday evening in the yarn shop, I hope they take away—not only a feeling of mystery and puzzles, of friendship and caring—but the urge to sink one’s fingers into a tempting pile of cashmere and cotton and luxurious angora wool yarn.
A mysterious woman arrives in picturesque Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, and the Seaside Knitters welcome her into their cozy world of intricate patterns and colorful skeins. Unfortunately, nothing frays a warm introduction like cold-blooded murder . . .
With her shy manner and baggy jeans, Rose Chopra becomes an unlikely superhero the night she stumbles into Izzy Perry’s shop and inadvertently saves a shipment of yarn from water damage. When the Seaside Knitters help the enigmatic handywoman settle into town and find work at a popular real estate company, Rose proves she can fix just about anything—until a potential homebuyer is killed and she becomes entangled in murder . . .
The moment controversial entrepreneur Spencer Paxton is found dead in a pricey ocean-side house, accusations fly at the last person on the property—Rose. But the Seaside Knitters have their doubts. After all, Spencer’s political aspirations as well as his company’s plans to pave over Sea Harbor’s historic art district with luxury apartments earned him some very real enemies . . .
Now, Izzy, Birdie, Nell, and Cass must swap knitting for sleuthing as they struggle to move the needle on a twisted homicide case causing turmoil across town. As tensions build in the sleepy New England community and Rose’s secret past unravels, the ladies face an unsettling realization—true victims aren’t always the ones buried six feet under . . .
Includes a knitting pattern
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