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Ebook Details
  • 07/2017
  • 978-1546416746
  • 264 pages
  • $15.99
Brooks Mencher
Author
The Rusalka Wheel

Adult; Mystery/Thriller; (Market)

Helen Oliver discovers an unusual spinning wheel in a Chinatown alley shop. Though the light is poor and the wheel is obscured by a mountain of antique furniture, it seems strangely familiar. She takes a few photos with her cell phone, and tries to buy it with what little money she has. When Helen mysteriously disappears, all that can be found is her purse and phone, discarded amid the trash along San Francisco’s northern piers.

Realizing the photos are the only clue to San Francisco’s latest serial killings, Police Detective William Chu turns to textile forensics consultant Ruth M, the Yarn Woman, to help identify the wheel and the shop. As Chu pursues the Pier Killer through San Francisco’s Chinatown and port districts, Ruth’s own investigation into the rare spinning wheel carries her to the roots of Slavic mythology. Legend and history interweave as Ruth peels back the centuries like pages in a book until at last she connects centuries-old myth to modern murder.

“The Rusalka Wheel” is the third book in Brooks Mencher’s Yarn Woman mystery series. The first book, “The Yarn Woman,” is a collection of three ghostly novelettes; the second book is “Wailing Wood,” a mystery of murder in California’s redwood country.

Reviews
At the start of Mencher’s gripping third mystery featuring the textile forensics consultant known simply as Ruth M (after 2015’s Wailing Wood), Helen Oliver ventures into an antique shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where she discovers a spinning wheel that she believes to be more than a hundred years old. Designs on the framework showing the water nymph Rusalka make her wonder whether this wheel is the same as the one her grandmother used in Ukraine long ago. Her attempts to purchase it are thwarted by the creepy couple running the store, though she takes some pictures of it with her phone. Helen’s purse and phone are later found near a pier, along with the corpse of an unidentified man. Det. William Chu of the SFPD takes the phone to Ruth M, who displays her expertise by rattling off a series of Sherlockian deductions after viewing images of the wheel from Helen’s phone. Evocative flashback sections giving the history of the Rusalka spinning wheel enhance the clever plot. Readers will look forward to Ruth M’s next adventure. (BookLife)
Formats
Ebook Details
  • 07/2017
  • 978-1546416746
  • 264 pages
  • $15.99
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