Murder, Simply Stitched: An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery by Isabella Alan

              I have always wondered with mysteries, if a main character comes to town and murders suddenly start to happen, does the main character ever believe the newly arisen problems are because of them?  That somehow they brought the trouble?  This is something I have thought about many times when watching Murder, She Wrote.  As much as I love the show, I cannot help but wonder if Jessica Fletcher thinks she’s cursed because everywhere she goes someone gets killed.  This exact thought was actually a topic of conversation in one of the Monk episodes, one of the few places, if not the only, where I have ever seen this type of thought addressed.  Of course, the situation is different when the main character is a police office or police detective, but for everyone else, it certainly makes me wonder.         

                Angie Braddock is still trying to get settled into her new Ohio life.  So far business at her Amish quilt shop is going well, but soon it will be winter.  With winter comes less tourists to the area, and Angie has to figure out some way to sustain herself through the slow season.  The solution she comes up with is to sell some of her aunt’s quilts at a local auction.  Angie hopes the quilts will bring in some much-needed money, which they do.  Unfortunately, the auction brings Angie something else as well.  That something is murder.

                Wanda Hunt, a township trustee, is determined to stop a planned pie factory from being built.  She fears it will ruin the Amish feel and aesthetic of the town, turning away tourists as a result.  It does not matter to Wanda that the factory will be owned by an Amish man, Aaron, the husband of Angie’s dear friend Rachel.  Wanda does not want the factory to exist and that’s that.

                When Wanda turns up dead (found by Angie), the factory immediately becomes a potential motive.  Add that to the fact that Wanda seems to have been killed by eating one of Rachel’s pies, and Angie sees she has a real mess on her hands.  She cannot believe that Rachel or her husband would ever kill Wanda, or anyone else for that matter.  With Rachel and Aaron not willing to say much in own their defense, Angie takes it upon herself to figure out who the real killer is.           

                I loved the goat in this book.  That probably sounds like a weird thing for me to start off with, but it’s true.  I absolutely loved the goat.  Petunia may have been a lot of trouble as she ran around and got in the way, but she was very sweet too.  So was the relationship she formed with Angie’s dog, Oliver.  Then there was the friendship that Petunia created with Angie.  As the book went on, Angie and Petunia became protective of each other, as well as friends. 

                 Speaking of protective, it cracked me up how much Oliver looked after Angie’s new kitten, Dodger. Oliver would go through such anxiety every time he thought Dodger was in trouble, which was a lot of the time. Then the two animals would curl up together and Oliver would watch Dodger as he slept. It was really nice to see all these animals care for each other, especially since the same could not necessarily be said for the people. Some of them are still unhappy that Angie, an English (non-Amish) person, is running an Amish shop, and they do not hesitate to treat her badly. That is always a really sad thing to see, especially since Angie goes out of her way to help the Amish people. She’ll do pretty much whatever they need her to do, including solving the murders in town.