A Pattern for Murder

There's never been a serious crime in the Keweenaw Peninsula—that anyone can remember. That is until Larry the Basset and Lydia the Poodle discover a fresh body below the lighthouse. The victim, a wealthy landowner recently returned from California, has been at odds with the community over a lighthouse slated to become a retirement home for local seniors.

When Sheriff Horace A. Clump has no intention of giving up his Sunday brunch of pannukakku to pursue an investigation, Hatti Lehtinen, manager of The Bait and Stitch—a combination bait and knitting shop—is determined to find the killer herself. After all, she's an Agatha Christie fan and besides, she’s desperate to protect her friends and relatives from false accusations.

But as more bodies turn up and lies are uncovered, it becomes clear that not everybody in Hatti’s circle is innocent, after all.

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Yarn Over Murder

A year after her marriage break-up and return to Michigan’s remote Keweenaw Peninsula, Hatti Lehtinen has settled into a peaceful life within the Finnish community as shopkeeper at Bait and Stitch, a hybrid fishing-and-yarn store.

When Hatti's beloved dad, Pops, breaks his leg in a snowmobiling accident, the mayor tags Hatti to fill Pop's role as the town police chief, and entire police force. Assured the job entails little more than prying quarters from frozen parking meters, Hatti steps up.

But Hatti's peaceful existence is short lived when the town's reigning St. Lucy is found dead in the funeral home sauna on the eve of the St. Lucy Festival. Now with a murder to investigate, Hatti's situation is complicated when she discovers the prime suspect is her brother-in-law, Reid Night Wind, a circumstance sure to bring her face-to-face with the husband who dumped her a year earlier—a man she’d hoped to never see again this side of the Pearly Gates.

With the counsel of her knitting circle, Hatti launches her investigation, fearing someone among those she's known all her life is a murderer. With the list of suspects growing like increases in a Finnish wedding ring shawl, the answer comes from an unlikely source. But can the town of Red Jacket ever be the same?

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A Double Pointed Murder

When Cricket Koski, a barmaid from the Black Fly, is stabbed to death with a double-pointed knitting needle on New Year’s Eve and deposited in the bed of Lars Teljo, it's up to Hatti Lehtinen to exonerate her ex-brother-in-law. It’s not that Hatti, who runs a fishing-slash-knitting supply shop, is a trained detective. It’s just that Sheriff Clump considers his collar a slam dunk because an affair between Lars and Cricket three years earlier has made him vulnerable to blackmail.

But there's a problem…

Everyone in the tiny, Finnish-American town on the Keweenaw Peninsula has to wear more than one hat and, as acting president of the chamber of commerce, Hatti has to host a quintet of television personalities who arrive unexpectedly to film an Antiques Roadshow knockoff called What’s in Your Attic?

What’s in the local attics are pieces of Nazi memorabilia from Finland’s World War II partnership with Hitler and when a letter disclosing the existence of a piece of Nazi artwork is discovered, all attention turns to trying to find the masterpiece.

Hatti begins to suspect there’s a connection between the arrival of the newcomers and the death of Cricket Koski and after a second shocking murder, she is sure of it. The only question is, which one of them did it? And, since double-pointed needles are packaged in sets of four, does that mean there are two murders still to come?

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A Fair Isle Murder

COMING SOON - 2024

Hatti Lehtinen and the ladies of the Red Jacket knitting circle have come to Mackinac Island to help Kay Preston launch a yarn shop in her pharmacy. But their plans for a Fair Isle knitting workshop take a back seat when the groom from an island dream wedding turns up dead from a lethal bee sting--or so it appears.

It turns out that the groom, Chad Cadwallader--aka "Chad the Cad"--had dumped Hatti's cousin, Elli Risto, just four weeks prior. Now Elli was the only witness to his death; a fact that even Hatti finds suspicious.

A traumatized Elli told the police the victim told her to get the EpiPen out of his pocket and to inject it in his thigh, which she did. He died, anyway, a circumstance that looks more than a little suspicious to Island Police Chief Hawk Winter who discovers a fully-loaded and functional dispenser on the ground.

Convinced that Chad’s demise comes out of something in his past, Hatti uses the opportunity to investigate Chad’s four ex-fiancées. Just when Hatti thinks she’s on the right track, a second murder occurs. Rollo Hoop’s death doesn’t make any sense and Hatti has to go back to the drawing board.

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