The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt

Shauna Wickle is on vacation!  She’s borrowed her Uncle Jim’s houseboat and is sailing downriver in search of some good memories.  However, after she’s distracted by charming bad-boy Bryn, Shauna winds up damaging the boat and now needs to get a job to pay for repairs.  Fortunately for her, Bryn’s mom owns a fabric store in town and is currently hiring.  Though it looks like our heroine is now set, trouble immediately starts brewing as a cold war between fabric stores suddenly goes hot.  Shauna immediately thrusts herself into an elaborate web of clandestine subterfuge in order to find out who’s behind all of this, even though no one asked her to!

The previous “Great British Bump-Off” miniseries from writer John Allison and artist Max Sarin was a delight, and I was very much looking forward to their follow-up.  This is only marginally less delightful, owing to the fact that the crimes and mystery at hand are even more low key and less urgent than what we got the first time around.  That doesn’t stop Allison from giving us more of Shauna’s winning neuroticism, a whole new cast of likeable eccentrics, and clever dialogue – puns and all!  Sarin’s art is gleefully unhinged as it was before with Shauna’s quirky over-emotiveness being incredibly rendered, and everyone else being given their own zany bit of personality.

Even though it’s been over a year since we got the previous miniseries, I hope it won’t take as long for Allison and Sarin to deliver Shauna’s next adventure.  Or their next work together, whatever it may be.