"The Art of Cruel Embroidery," by Steven Sheil, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July 2024.
A historical mystery spread out over decades, and a classic love triangle.
It starts in Macon, Georgia, in 1948. Woody Wyle is a tailor specializing in the highly decorated clothes favored by country singers. One day an up-and-comer named Eddie Prospect enters his shop and covets a jacket he can't afford. So begins a relationship of ebbs and flows, sun and storm, as Eddie becomes a star and Woody becomes tailor to the stars.
Woody knows that his looks and personality are never going to make him a sex symbol like Eddie and that's fine until he falls in love with Sammi-Jo. Inevitably she falls for Eddie, and inevitably, he's a user of women or, as he puts it "not the marrying kind."
What follows is a well-written tale of vengeance, plotted and carried out over decades.
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