Buried in Quilts: A Joan Spencer Mystery

Frommer's second mystery (after Murder in C Major) offers an entertaining family-centered murder investigation while examining the importance of quilts as a means of understanding women's history. Amateur sleuth and widow Joan Spencer, manager of the Oliver, Ind., Civic Symphony, helps her group prepare to play for the opening of the city's annual quilt show with her hands full and her heart heavy. The demanding chairman of the quilt show, Mary Sue Ellett, has become even more difficult since the death of her mother, Edna, a woman whom Joan had admired. Mary Sue wants to mount a special showing of Edna's quilts, though her brother and sister are more interested in their mother's missing will, which they fear has cut them from their inheritance in favor of a cousin who had been living with and caring for the deceased. Joan tries to sidestep the family's arguments but must endure listening to one heated discussion while hanging quilts for the show. The next day she finds Mary Sue's dead body under a pile of quilts pulled from the display. Along with her estranged daughter and a cop friend, Joan becomes entangled in the Ellett family squabbles-and helps to spot the killer. (Sept.)