Ted Lawrence calls his family together one weekend at his Maine summer house on The Point to introduce a new family member into the fold. To say it goes badly would be an understatement. Mayhem ensues, as does murder times two. A pack of ungrateful adult children, colleagues, and hangers-on are all suspect. How will part-time private investigator Angie Curtis solve this who-done-it?

“Tightening the Threads,” published by Kensington Publishing Corp., is the fifth book in a series of author Lea Wait's Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries. As a newbie, I picked up the thread in the middle. It wasn't a disadvantage, as Wait brings the reader partially up to speed, but characters surrounding the narrator have histories explored in the other Mainely Needlepoint books. After reading this book, I will go back and bring myself up to speed.

The book begins with pizza, as any good story should. Not just any pizza, but homemade artisan pizza with artichoke hearts and black olives and herbs. While the reader sits with the characters drinking Samuel Adams and waiting for the pizza to bake, the mystery unravels with a revelation from one good friend to another.

This mystery's plot is familiar, along the lines of Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher in the long-running television series “Murder She Wrote.” It's a 'cozy' mystery, where the sleuth is usually a brilliant amateur sleuth with many interests who lives in a small community with an endless supply of interesting characters. (Coastal Maine really is a perfect setting for this premise.) Angie Curtis is relatively young, has a love interest, and lived in Arizona for 10 years before returning to her hometown of Haven Harbor. Her experiences in Arizona give her a unique perspective on the goings on around town. She lives in a small house, has a cat and and runs her shop, called Mainely Needlepoint.

The main mystery remains a puzzle until the end, as Wait has done a good job of making certain that most of the characters could have done it. And there is added value to the book, in that Wait weaves in other plot lines and interesting factoids about everything from how to put together a lobster bake, to how to build a stone wall and how to run an art gallery. Each short chapter references words stitched onto an actual needlepoint work created by women living centuries ago. Wait provides a short biography of each stitcher.

The book is small, but the pages inside are filled with enough good stuff to keep readers guessing until the end, as they think about who the culprit(s) may have been while following the interesting lives of Wait's industrious and quirky characters.

Wait lives in Edgecomb in a very old house and has published books for both children and adults. Besides the Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries, she has another series, Shadows Antique Print Mysteries. She also has a memoir called “Living and Writing on the Coast of Maine.” A complete list of her books is available at leawait.com.