Last Wool and Testament

This is the first cozy that I have read in a few years.  I got tired of their simplistic plots and Stepford characters. Because this book is about weavers and I am a weaver I decided it was a good time to try a cozy again.  I was not disappointed. Last Wool and Testament was fantastic.

The story opens with amateur sleuth Kath Rutledge traveling from Illinois to Blue Plum, Tennessee to attend her grandmother Ivy McClellan's burial.  Kath has planned to stay for 2 weeks so that she can decide what to do with her grandmother's home and yarn shop business both of which she inherited. When she arrives at her grandmother's home for her stay, Kath finds that the lock has been changed. She is quickly handed a piece of paper stating that her grandmother and now Kath owes back rent for the property.  She is also told that the home and The Weaver's Cat, a yarn shop, are now owned by someone else.  Kath meets with the TGIF - thank goodness it's fiber - group for advice.  The TGIF members meet regularly at the shop to work on fiber projects.  Kath also meets with her grandmother's attorney, Homer Wood, for assistance with the estate.  Wood puts her off several times before he finally tells her that her grandmother was a suspect in a murder.  The murdered man's relative now claims to own both of her grandmother's properties.  Kath works with her new friends from TGIF to determine what is going on in Blue Plum.

I loved this book.  However, in the beginning I had a difficult time determining what character was speaking.  It finally dawned on me that a ghost is one of the characters.  All I had to do was look at the cover of the book and see that this new cozy series is a haunted yarn shop mystery.  When I finally figured out which characters were speaking, the reading was smooth sailing.  The ghost character began to bother me after a few chapters though.  I just am not in to ghost stories.  I wonder if the identity of this ghost will be a recurring character or if there will be different ghosts in subsequent books in the series.

Solving the mystery of who murdered the dead man was thrilling.  Two more murders occurred later in the plot and it was interesting to watch Kath try to connect them to the first murder.  There were plenty of red herrings and twists in the plot to satisfy me.  The writing was crisp making Last Wool a great introduction to a new cozy series.

4 out of 5 stars.