cover image The Double Wedding Ring: A Someday Quilts Mystery Featuring Nell Fitzgerald

The Double Wedding Ring: A Someday Quilts Mystery Featuring Nell Fitzgerald

Clare O'Donohue. Plume, $15 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-452-29879-8

Police chief Jesse Dewalt finds that girlfriend Nell Fitzgerald's assistance in solving the violent crimes that afflict the upstate New York town of Archers Rest can be a mixed blessing in O'Donohue's solid fifth quilting cozy (after 2011's The Devil's Puzzle). Nell helps her grandmother, Eleanor Cassidy, run Someday Quilts, and is also helping prepare for Eleanor's upcoming wedding, but the discovery of the body of Roger Leighton, Jesse's former NYPD partner in a car parked near Jesse's home, heralds an upsetting series of events. Jesse, who professes not to know why Roger came to Archers Rest, is obviously hiding something; Anna, Roger's grieving widow, arrives and clings to Jesse; and Eleanor's post-wedding plans come as a shock. Nell and her quilting klatch friends conduct their own investigation with dangerous but productive results. Quilting lore, Nell and Jesse's rocky relationship, and a couple of suspicious strangers make a pleasing patchwork mystery. Agent: Sharon Bowers, Miller Agency. (Oct.)