Thai Die (Needlecraft Mystery Series #12) » (Reprint)

Monica Ferris is the USA Today bestselling author of several mystery series.

As owner of the Crewel World needlework shop and part-time sleuth, Betsy Devonshire has become skilled at weaving suspicious threads together. Just back from a trip to Thailand, Doris Valentine is eager to show her stitching friends her souvenirs, which includes dazzling Thai silk. She also has a small stone Buddha that she agreed to deliver to an antique store in St. Paul. It's wrapped in a dirty rag, which she throws away. When she meets the dealer, he is surprised that she unwrapped it, though relieved the statue's delicate hands aren't damaged. The next night, Doris's apartment is broken into, and the things she bought in Thailand are taken. The antique shop owner is found murdered and his shop ransacked. The Buddha is gone. Then someone confronts Doris with a gun, demanding the "Thai silk." Meanwhile, Betsy starts to wonder about the dingy wrapper she retrieved from the trash.

Publishers Weekly

Thai silk to die for plunges Betsy Devonshire, the proprietor of Crewel World in Excelsior, Minn., into danger in Ferris's winning 12th needlecraft mystery (after 2007's Knitting Bones). Among the many souvenirs Betsy's friend Doris Valentine brings home from a Thailand vacation is a stone Buddha to be delivered to a St. Paul antiques dealer. When Doris discards the dirty cloth the Buddha was wrapped in, Betsy rescues the cloth, which turns out to be valuable silk more than 2,000 years old. Has Doris become an unwitting pawn in an international antiquities theft operation? After someone ransacks Doris's apartment and murders the antiques dealer, Sgt. Mike Malloy of the Excelsior police and "civilian detective" Betsy find themselves involved in a case more complicated than any needlework pattern she's ever attempted. With more action and a stronger plot than Knitting Bones, this entry in the popular cozy series offers such choice knitting tidbits as how to spin hair from a 14-pound angora rabbit. (Dec.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.