Sewing up all the loose ends
A handful of writers have found their niche in the world of
quilt mysteries
(HoustonChronicle, 10/29/12, p. D-1)
By Maggie Galehouse
No,
Earlene Fowler wouldn’t dream of using a quilt as a murder weapon. “I’d never
do that!” Fowler exclaims, aghast at the idea. But wrap a quilt around a dead
body? That, she’s done. And Terri Thayer? She killed somebody with a rotary
cutter, which slices fabric the way a pizza cutter slices pizza. Thayer and
Fowler aren’t murder-ers, really. They’re writers of that überspecific genre,
quilt mysteries. And their books, along with those by Clare O’Donohue and
several othe rs, are familiar to the tens of thousands expected at the
International Quilt Festival Houston this week.
Thayer
broke out the rotary cutter for her first quilting mystery, “Wild Goose Chase,”
which introduces Dewey Pellicano, a woman who inherits a quilt shop.
“My
book cover had a bloody rotary cutter by my name,” Thayer recalls. “That was
nice.”
Fowler
is an originator of the genre, known for her award-winning series about Benni
Harper — a curator, rancher and sometime sleuth who also happens to be a
quilter. Of course.
“Back
in the early ’90s, Jennifer Chiaverini and I were the only people writing
fiction about quilts,” says Fowler, whose fourth Benni Harper book, “Goose in
the Pond,” features the corpse in the quilt. “But in the last 20 years, it has
exploded.”
Both
Fowler, of California, and Thayer, of Colorado, have discovered a doubly rich
audience for their books. Quilters love mysteries, they’ve learned, and mystery
readers love quilts.
“Quilting
is an exacting, mathematical sort of thing,” says Fowler, who learned to love
quilts and quilting from her Arkansas grandmother. “A lot of quilters are
mystery fans. They want to solve that puzzle.”
Thayer
agrees.
“With
both, you start with nothing,” she says. “There’s a lot of work to do — some of
it tedious — and then hopefully you’re generally happy with the outcome. … It’s
about bringing order to something.” A quilt mystery should not be confused with
a mystery quilt, which is a quilt made from a pattern doled out in tiny steps —
like clues.
Both
Fowler, 58, and Thayer, 61, have attended the International Quilt Festival
Houston and understand that quilting is a major industry. Both name their books
after quilting patterns and work quilting into their plots whenever possible.
In
Fowler’s “Kansas Troubles,” the clue is in one of the quilts.
In
“Monkey Wrench,” Thayer’s latest, the fabric becomes a clue.
Yet
neither writer’s books are particularly bloody.
Thayer
says that for the most part, she writes “cozy mysteries,” which means that a
lot of the action occurs off the page.
“The
violence in my books is off screen,” Thayer confides, “but the sex is not. It’s
not graphic, but it’s a little titillating. There’s a hunky homicide detective
named Buster. …” maggie.galehouse@chron. com .
