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Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - Knit Fast, Die Young: A Knitting Mystery (Knitting Mysteries)
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List Price: $6.99
Our Price: $6.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Pocket
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780743484749
ISBN: 0743484746
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2007-05-22
Publisher: Pocket
Studio: Pocket
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Editorial Reviews:
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She found the body. Again. Sensing a pattern? Ariadne Evans swore her sleuthing days were over after her very own knitting shop became a crime scene a few months back. But she hadn't anticipated that the Freeport Wool and Yarn Festival would become the site of another murder -- with hers truly as a prime suspect. Since Ari was the one to find the body of Felicia Barr -- the much detested and influential owner of Knit It Up magazine -- with a knitting needle stuck in her back, the cops are needling Ari for answers. In a stitch, Ari dons her hand-knit detective cap and helps her on-and-off boyfriend, Detective Josh Pierce, untangle the day's events and solve a very woolly crime -- before the killer strikes again....
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: So disappointing
Comment: So, I like cozy mysteries. I like knitting. What more could I want than a cozy mystery involving knitting?
Turns out, a LOT. Now, I must admit, this is the first book I've read in a long time where I've not caught any spelling or grammar errors. But....
The characters are beyond wooden. You can't tell them apart at all. I literally had to keep flipping back to earlier chapters to keep straight which of the possible Suspects had done what. They were entirely unmemorable. No idea what they looked like, no distinctive speech tags or accents, nothing. Just a bunch of generic women. The only one I remembered was the pink beret.
Second, the 'love' plot is so trite it's unbelievable. I literally cringed as I read it. Thankfully that only took up about two pages before everyone was over it and back to watching ice skating. (Guess he wasn't that great a kisser?)
Third, these cops are apparently morons. Now, I'm no cop, but I've read the odd criminal justice textbook in my day. Heck, if you even watched Law & Order (pick your flavor thereof) you'd know more about police procedure than Ms. Kruger does. As the mystery unfolds, turned entirely into the competent (?) hands of a yarn store owner (hey, she's miles brighter than the fuzz here), it would be ENTIRELY impossible to prosecute in court. But these cops don't know what they're doing, so they'll just hide behind rafters and let our Ari have her Hercule Poirot moment.
Fourth, the dialogue. When I teach, the textbook and I both hammer home the idea that people generally don't go up to strangers and spill their life story. Especially when that stranger is accusing them of murder. When the dialogue isn't completely banal, it's info dumps, such as "Do you know what 'suicide by cop' is?" (No, please tell me....is the upshot of her reply. Which he does, for about three pages. And this, by the way, is the flirtation scene.)
As for plot, well, at the risk of being a spoiler, just pay attention to who never speaks and never gets mentioned. Ding ding ding! Crikey. The motivations were weak, there were no real credible red herrings, and frankly, I only finished it because I took a vow with myself back in high school as punishment for not reading Joyce. We have unresolved issues (what about Mr. Barr?) and the 'tension' between the State Police and local never materializes--it would have brought some very-much-needed conflict.
Look, I like knitters, and I like to support knitters whenever and wherever possible. But I can't abide writing this bad. The story wasn't original, the characters were undifferentiated beyond 'types' (the hunky cop, the brusque Chief of Police, the Burbly Best Friend, the Spunky Heroine); it was *boring*. And when two people die and it's *Boring*, someone's doing something wrong.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A pleasant diversion.
Comment: Knit Fast, Die Young is a pleasant, unassuming read. I wasn't in love with the book or the characters, but it was a nice way to pass the time and it was fairly well-written.
I found many of the characters to be interchangeable and had trouble keeping them apart. Nonetheless, it was an interesting read.
I strongly prefer first-person mysteries as the distance created with a third-person POV can separate the reader from the action, and I found that to be the case in this book. I also thought the POV was uneven -- sometimes giving insight into what other characters were doing/thinking, but mostly sticking with the limited POV of the main character.
This is the first Knitting Mystery book I've read, and I will definitely get ahold of #1 in the series.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It passes the time (minor spoiler)
Comment: I dislike this genre for the most part, but my sister is trying to get published in it. I'm her proofreader & editor, so I've been reading cozies for a while now to see what she might need to change to make her books better.
This book has two main problems that jump right out at me. One, a character will mention a knitting term, and then the author has to go into an explanation of that term for the readers who may be non-knitters. HUH? If you're not a knitter, why would you read this particular book? (I am a knitter, by the way.) And even with the explanations, I'm not sure a non-knitter is going to get it. Or even care. I suspect non-knitter readers will just blip over these explanations. Waste of space. I suggested it to my sister to read, but she won't touch it because she's not a knitter.
The second problem is that the murder's physics are just not logical. To stab someone in the back with a knitting needle AND KILL THEM - well, take a look at your knitting needles sometime. You have to get through all the tough back muscles, and then you have to penetrate the heart. I suspended my disbelief throughout the book because I thought it would turn out that the actual murder had been committed in a different way (with the needle being substituted later as a red herring, or, the needle was shot from a crossbow or some other absurd but more physically logical idea) - but it did, in fact, transpire that the killer used the knitting needle to stab the victim. Lucky shot, I say.
Customer Rating:
Summary: fun, light reading
Comment: I haven't finished the book yet but it's one that I look forward to reading each time I have to put it down. The plot is easy to follow. There are interesting facts about knitting.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fun not heavy reading
Comment: I enjoyed this. I knew who did it; I just didn't figure out why and had to read to the end. I enjoyed this book very much.
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