When Angie who lives over Izzy's knitting shop turns up dead and the police decide the murderer was someone just passing through, the knitters disagree and begin looking among the persons in their own community of Sea Harbor on Cape Ann for the culprit. I love the community of Sea Harbor and its residents. The author did a great job developing most of the characters. I really felt that I wasn't sure which of the knitters was to be the "sleuth" until later in the book, and I really felt that character had been developed less than some of the others. There were several times when the meetings were called by various other persons in the knitting group. I really felt that there needed to be a stronger identification of the main sleuth character earlier in the book. I really hate that Angie was the one who died. She was a librarian working for the historical society and was researching deeds and other old records. As a genealogist and librarian, I found myself really identifying with the deceased as we learned more about her. I also would have liked to see the sleuth digging into some of those records. I found myself wishing that Torie O'Shea of Rett McPherson's series had been the sleuth on this case! I'd really solved the mysteries (not just the murder but also the lobster trap thievery) earlier in the book. There was one main character upon which most of the red herrings throwed suspicion. It was almost too obvious that person was not the one responsible. All of that said, I still found this to be a pleasant and enjoyable read. I like the community of Sea Harbor, and I look forward to returning there for another visit with the next installment in the series. Perhaps many of the flaws of the first in the series will be ironed out in the second installment as the other knitters would have discovered Nell's ability to sleuth by that time. ( )

This book was part of a knitting theme basket that my mom won in a church Christmas auction.

I love a good mystery, especially one that involves knitting and I wasn't disappointed. ( )

This was not an unpleasant read, exactly, and I did like the characters. For well-rounded characters the author gets a star. But for really, really annoying dialogue that frequently makes me stop in disbelief, rudely jolted right out of the thread of the story, she doesn't get any additional stars from me. Having just discovered the dead body of her friend, Cass blurts out: "I saw her. Her hair was tangled up in the warp from one of my traps, pinning her down to the bottom of the sea as surely and completely as a trapped lobster." Hello? How long have you been rehearsing that speech, Cass? Since before Angie died, I bet. Many of the characters seem to have a habit of lapsing into over-dramatized, purple prose, and in a supposedly realistic 21st century novel I find it annoying. And just to put the icing on the cake, twice we find mention of the "weave" of a piece of knitting, meaning apparently the pattern or the stitch. There are several meanings for the verb "to weave" in a knitting context ("to darn in ends"; "to graft two pieces of knitting together" with Kitchener stitch) but no meaning for the weave of knitting; this is either an egregious error or a very localized dialect useage, in which case the readers deserve to be alerted to the local peculiarities of the Seaside Knitters' language. ( )

Death by Cashmere is the first in Sally Goldenbaum's Seaside Knitters series (she is also the author of the Queen Bees Quilt mystery series), and it's a lovely introduction to Sea Harbor, Massachusetts and the knitting group that meets in Izzy's shop. This charming story begins after Izzy has moved back to Sea Harbor, abandoning her law career to open a knitting shop. Her aunt Nell, Nell's elderly friend Birdie (a hoot!), and lobsterwoman Cass get together one evening a week to share food, gossip, and knitting time. When Angie, who lives above Izzy's shop, is found drowned, her beautiful red hair tangled in one of Cass's lobster pots, the police in Sea Harbor are quick to assume the culprit is a random act by an outsider. The knitting group senses something is wrong in their little town, and they want it fixed so they can feel safe again.

Sea Harbor is the kind of town I love to read about: truly close-knit and caring, families who have lived there for generations, and in one of my favorite locales, New England. It's a bonus that the picturesque seaside town gives Goldenbaum plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her gift for descriptive writing. Nell, Cass, Izzy, and Birdie are well-developed characters with interesting backstories eased into the narrative. Goldenbaum gives them plenty of scenes to interact in smaller groups, with secondary characters, and as a quartet, which made them feel like real people. They have distinct personalities and a rich group dynamic. When they talk about the murder and begin investigating, it's not the pushy, overt "I must solve this crime myself" investigation that I've come to expect from amateur sleuths. Their efforts are more organic, arising from their fear for their community, and the pieces of the puzzle are slow to drop in place to form a satisfying conclusion. Sea Harbor is more developed than I expect in a mystery, with great secondary and even tertiary characters who give the reader a real sense of the place. The mystery was engaging, but at times I would be immersed in Sea Harbor, then suddenly be reminded that I was reading a murder mystery. This made the book an even more complex, fun read for me, but readers who like the murder at the forefront and are not as interested in getting to know the town and characters may find the book slow-moving.

Goldenbaum seems unconcerned with the conventions of contemporary cozy mysteries, and I found that refreshing. She eschews the usual youngish, single point-of-view character who spends much of her time looking for a guy (though, don't get me wrong, I enjoy plenty of those) in favor of Nell, Izzy's aunt, who is happily married. There is a sweet bit of romance for Izzy, but it's in the background. The mystery is complex and satisfying, with numerous threads that come together nicely. There is no sense of imminent danger to the sleuths (I often find those scenes to be annoying in other mysteries), and no confront-the-killer ending. I found the writing and editing to be excellent, and I found very little to nitpick there. One annoyance is in the dialogue: the characters frequently refer to each other by name while they're speaking to each other, and no one talks that way. I found that I could skim past the references without my inner Grammar Nerd going nuts. There was a reference to a "unique, one-of-a-kind sweater" that made me grimace, but for the most part, the writing and editing were great (not always true of cozy mysteries). None of these little things diminished my pleasure in reading, though as someone who cooks, I'm still scratching my head over an herbed spinach frittata apparently made with cumin and coriander AND topped with parmesan AND sour cream. And I have a bone to pick with whoever approved the jacket copy, which makes it seem that Izzy is the point-of-view character, not even mentioning Nell's name! I spent the first few pages annoyed at the wandering POV, only to realize that the misleading jacket copy was the problem.

To sum up, Death by Cashmere is a thoroughly enjoyable start to a new mystery series, and I highly recommend it to knitters, mystery readers, readers of women's fiction, and anyone who enjoys a cozy visit to a small town.

http://hollybooknotes.blogspot.com ( )

I just finished the book and loved it. I loved all her characters. I hope she will continue other books in this series of Knitting Mysteries! ( )