Ponder Post: A Drunkard's Path

Drunkard's Path by Clare O'Donohue is the second book in the Someday Quilts Mystery series. I reviewed the first in the series, Lover's Knot, in my post for 9/9/17. In the first book I was overcome by the huge cast of characters – all the members of the Friday Night Quilt Club. By the second book I was more familiar with them and so that was not such a hurdle. In the first book a dead body was not found until far into the book. The corpse was found much sooner in A Drunkard's Path. Even though these mini-gripes of mine were fixed in the second book, still, A Drunkard's Path was not stellar. The mystery and clue revelation is adequate. The back story of the budding romance the main character Nell has with the police chief progresses at a snail's' space from the first to the second book. The quilting references are really fun for me as a quilter. But overall the book was just so-so.

The front cover really bugs me about this and other books in the series. The book is titled after a quilt pattern. The cover of the book has a quilt on it. Wouldn't it make eminent sense to have the picture on the cover be a quilt in the same pattern as the book title? Perhaps this might even educate the readership, quilting and non-quilting. A drunkard's path pattern is made up of square with a quarter circle of a contrasting fabric inset in the corner. A complementary square with the two colors reversed is also sewn. The following sample block is made up of sixteen such squares in a classic arrangement. The crooked path they form is like that of a staggering person who has had too much to drink and is a bit tipsy.

Those quarter-circle squares can be oriented in a myriad of ways. This quilt below shows twelve different options. See if you can pick out how those quarter-circle squares were arranged in each case.

I did check the third and fourth books in the series out of the library. They became overdue and I renewed them but not before accruing a fine I had to pay. I still have not read these books and they are due again. I think this may be word from above that I should give up on this series, at least for now. I will be returning The Double Cross and The Devil's Puzzle unopened. The cover photos do not match the title quilts anyway.