Murder by Sunlight: The Charity Quilt: A Quilted Mystery

In Graham’s middling fifth Quilted mystery (after 2012’s Murder by Vegetable: Baby Quilt), Sheriff Tony Abernathy of Silersville, Tenn., is seeking re-election, but he’s distracted by a rash of violent crimes—a body found in a tree, assaults by a man wielding a hammer and a wrench, and the murder of the town’s most notorious blackmailer, Candy Tibbles. The sweltering summer heat can’t stop level-headed Tony from frantically racing around Park County in search of answers. An old secret turns out to have cast a destructive shadow over Candy, but the resolutions of the other cases require twists that are a bit of a stretch. While Graham addresses such serious issues as elder care, poverty, and drugs, some readers will wish that she had done more to flesh out Tony and the other main characters. Quilters, though, will welcome the mystery quilt clues attributed to Tony’s wife, Theo. (Oct.)