Guilty as Framed
Series: An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery #11
Author: Lois Winston
Genre: Cozy Crafts and Hobbies Mystery
Pages: 263
Release Date: September 6, 2022
Summary:
When an elderly man shows up at the home of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack, she’s drawn into the unsolved mystery of the greatest art heist in history.
Boston mob boss Cormac Murphy has recently been released from prison. He refuses to believe Anastasia’s assertion that the man he’s looking for doesn’t live at her address and attempts to muscle his way into her home. His efforts are thwarted by Anastasia’s fiancé Zack Barnes.
A week later, a stolen SUV containing a dead body appears in Anastasia’s driveway. Anastasia believes Murphy is sending her a message. It’s only the first in a series of alarming incidents, including a mugging, a break-in, another murder, and the discovery of a cache of jewelry and an etching from the largest museum burglary in history.
But will Anastasia solve the mystery behind these shocking events before she falls victim to a couple of desperate thugs who will stop at nothing to get what they want?
Crafts projects included.
An Interview with Anastasia Pollack from Lois Winston’s Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries
How did you and your author meet?
Lois Winston and I first met years ago when an editor asked her agent if she had any authors who could write a crafting-themed cozy mystery series. At the time, Lois was published in humorous women’s fiction and romantic suspense, but in her day job, she worked as a designer and editor for craft and women’s magazines, craft book publishers, and craft kit manufacturers. Her agent thought she’d be the perfect person to write a series this editor. I often wonder how different my life would have been had Lois written me as a romance heroine.
Why did this writer decide to feature you in a book?
I have no idea why she plucked me out of the expansive alternate universe where fictional characters reside before they land in books. Maybe there’s a lottery, and my number was called. The universe doesn’t explain the whys and wherefores of these things. All I know is that one day I was living a quite ordinary life as a middle-class working wife and mother, and the next thing I knew, I found myself a widow juggling massive debt, my deceased husband’s loan shark, and a nasty communist mother-in-law. Then the dead bodies started showing up, and I found myself forced to become an amateur sleuth. That all happened in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series.
Do you have any friends or family helping you out?
I don’t know if Lois felt sorry for me or if she realized crime-solving wasn’t in my crafts editor job description, but I was lucky to discover my best friend Cloris McWerther, the food editor at the magazine where we both work, was willing to play Watson to my reluctant Sherlock. And then there’s Zack. Zachary Barnes started out as my tenant but has since become so much more. He’s a photojournalist, and although he continues to deny it, I suspect he works for one of the alphabet agencies because he has skills you wouldn’t associate with someone who makes a living taking pictures of flora and fauna.
Do you have a regular job and investigate on the side or are you a full-time detective?
I work as the crafts editor at American Woman, a women’s magazine sold at supermarket checkout aisles, but Lois keeps dropping dead bodies in my path, forcing me into amateur sleuth mode.
What is the funniest thing that happens to you or another character in this story?
The humor in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries comes more from how Lois has me deal with the situations she forces me into. She doesn’t write slapstick or pratfall humor. She’s written me as a character who realizes that when confronted with difficulty, you can either meet it head on with humor or curl up into a ball and cry. She’s given me a witty sense of humor that’s both observational and often self-deprecating. At least I have that to thank her for.
Have you solved other cases or is this your first one?
Guilty as Framed is the eleventh book in the series. At this point, there have been more dead bodies than I can count! There are also three novellas. Although there were no dead bodies in those, I was thrust into the middle of a stalking, a kidnapping, and an identity theft.
Do you have a gift or special talent?
I guess it turns out that I have a talent for solving crimes, especially murders. Who knew? It certainly wasn’t part of the curriculum when I attended art school.
Who is the most important individual in your life?
Hey, I’m a mom. You can’t make me choose between my two sons. They’re both equally important to me. And then there’s my mother and Zack. They count, too.
What is your ideal vacation?
Any place I can go to get away from murder and mayhem, but I haven’t had much luck with vacations ever since Lois started controlling my life. In Mosaic Mayhem I was kidnapped in Barcelona and while on a cruise to the Caribbean in A Sew Deadly Cruise, I encountered several dead bodies.
If you could change anything about your life, what would it be?
I would love to win the lottery to pay off all the debt my husband left me. I’d also like to have a good relationship with my mother-in-law. And of course, it would be great never again to deal with murder and mayhem. However, Lois tells me I shouldn’t hold my breath. Novels need conflict. She’s certainly good at creating lots of that in my life.
Other Books in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series
About the Author
USA Today and Amazon bestselling author Lois Winston began her award-winning writing career with Talk Gertie to Me, a humorous fish-out-of-water novel about a small-town girl going off to the big city and the mother who had other ideas. That was followed by the romantic suspense Love, Lies, and a Double Shot of Deception.
Then Lois’s writing segued unexpectantly into the world of humorous amateur sleuth mysteries, thanks to a conversation her agent had with an editor looking for craft-themed mysteries. In her day job Lois was an award-winning craft and needlework designer, and although she’d never written a mystery—or had even thought about writing a mystery—her agent decided she was the perfect person to pen a series for this editor. Thus, was born the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, which Kirkus Reviews dubbed “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” The series now includes eleven novels and three novellas. Lois also writes the Empty Nest Mysteries, currently at two novels, and one book so far in her Mom Squad Capers series.
To date, Lois has published twenty novels, five novellas, several short stories, one children’s chapter book, and one nonfiction book on writing, inspired by her twelve years working as an associate at a literary agency.
Giveaway
Prize: (3) Print or Digital – Guilty as Framed (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery) by Lois Winston (Print U.S. Only)
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Happy Reading!
Thanks so much for interviewing Anastasia today!