Touch-Me-Not: A Martha's Vineyard Mystery

Near the start of Riggs's delightful ninth Martha's Vineyard mystery featuring 92-year-old sleuth Victoria Trumbull (after 2009's Death and Honesty), electrician LeRoy Watts shoots his former assistant, Jerry Sparks, with a Taser after Jerry confronts him in his Oak Bluffs office and threatens blackmail. Jerry drops to the floor dead. Moments before LeRoy's nine-year-old twin sons burst in the door from baseball practice, he stuffs Jerry in the office closet. Later, LeRoy takes the body to a book storage shed at the West Tisbury library, where the "mathematical" knitters (they do Möbius strips and Klein bottles) are working on a special coral reef quilt to raise awareness of global warming. One of the women in the knitting group asks Victoria for help because she's been receiving obscene phone calls. A second murder raises the stakes in a cozy that celebrates the springtime beauty of the island as well as its quirky, endearing residents. (Sept.)