The Knitting Enigma

By: Vella Day

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Vella Day brings you another crazy time travel story of a haunted saloon and hidden treasures.


The last thing I expected to see today was John, our timeline agent--or whatever he was calling himself these days--in our hometown. Millie, my best friend and time traveling buddy, was thrilled. I was not. John claimed that he needed our help to keep the timeline from falling apart.

Why us, you might wonder? He claimed we were good at knitting and asking questions. And where did we have to go? To Dry Gulch, South Dakota. In freaking 1880. Even John admitted that it was a fairly lawless mining town where the ratio of men to women was 200 to 1. Okay, that part sounded fine, but no Internet? Poor facilities? And the food? Would it be something the men shot that day? Like rattlesnake?

But, of course, Millie, who had a slight crush on our time traveler thought it would be fun. Our assignment seemed simple enough. Find out what or who was behind the supposedly haunted Red Lantern Saloon.

Since John gave us a bag of gold dust and a trunk full of period clothes, I guess it wouldn't be all that bad. What could go wrong in a week?

Not my favorite

As someone who discovered the first book in the series and enjoyed it, I wanted to finish the series. This one is ok. Not the best. Not the worst. A little below par compared to book two. I only say that because if you have listened to both previous books you will see that something has gone amiss. It seems the author lost the voices and personality she had given the characters of Edith and Millie that had made them great for cozy mystery. In this book Edith and Millie aren’t the same. Suddenly Millie gets “dreamy” over the Time Travel Agent? Edith talks like she is suddenly 20-30 years old. You only remember that they are endearing 70 year old knitters when she mentions it. Otherwise you could think they were much much younger through their actions, language and interactions with the setting and plot.
The voice this time - the worst it’s been. Either this piece is not edited for spelling errors or the voice is struggling to read. Example: macho. He is a macho man. Read as “ma-ko”. Millie became mile at times. To a listener, unless you are focused on the audio and nothing else, like knitting or cooking or walking, these kinds of errors really distract and disrupt the story. There were more “wait, what??” moments to rewind and try again to understand it.