April has returned to her hometown after leaving her San Francisco home and husband of ten years, Ken, who now refuses to sign April’s divorce papers. April is busy helping his father Ed and his life partner Vince with their restoration business, providing custom paints and stamping historic designs, as well as designing her own line of stamps that she hopes Stamping Sister Queen Trishelle will buy and market for her. 

April is also trying to work in some time with new boyfriend Mitch and see where that will lead. She thinks she knows, but she wants to be sure and she wants to be completely free of Ken before she starts something new. Mitch is very busy also as he is building a Habitat for Humanity type neighborhood, and the first house is almost complete. 

While in the corn maze, Mitch and April stumble over the body of the woman whose family was to receive the first house in a few weeks. Xenia, her husband and five children were eagerly putting the finishing, personal touches on the house. April finds it odd that Xenia was selling Queen Trish’s other line of products, a cosmetic line, and is very distressed when she learns Mitch has been receiving threats that he should cease construction of the houses and even more so when ethnic slurs are painted on the almost completed house. 

Not wanting to get involved, but knowing she already is, April, along with her friends, begin to take notice of some of the seemingly innocuous events that are occurring around them and wonder if they add up to murder.  

April is a refreshing addition to crafting amateur detectives; she is very serious about her stamping, hoping to be able to create a line of home décor stamps, but she also realizes the reality of things, that some businesses are very hard to break into without a lot of money. She has returned home and is finding comfort in her new family situation, her father and mother divorced, her father with a life partner, Vince, and her mother marrying the former lead singer of a popular pop band when April was growing up. 

April can’t figure out who has a motive to kill Xenia, and though the police think her husband Pedro is a good suspect, April and Mitch don’t believe it. There are a lot of good suspects, and a lot of subtle hints tying everyone and everything together. There are also some interesting relationship dynamics at play, between April and her parents and April and her friend, and Mitch’s sister, Rocky, and Vince’s parents that add some depth to this mystery. Inked Up is a substantial mystery, with a crafting angle that’s sure to draw many in, and a great plot and characters to keep them.                                                  

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry