The story picks up right after Jane and Nick have a big fight about her 5th birthday, which results in Jane putting her powerful fist in the wall beside Nick, and him responding with a flick of his lighter, threatening her with flame - the ultimate betrayal for a meat golem. Jane flees the scene, realizing she has terribly frightened the man she loves, and she decides she must return to her hometown to discover who she was created from, and why she is taunted with memories of a sweet young toddler girl reaching for an orange. And so Jane heads to the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona in search of answers.
While searching for her creator, Burke O'Hare, she meets quite a number of interesting characters, including Burke's human-passing-for-a-meat-golem girlfriend, Frances; Burke's cohort, a ghoul named Barrow White; and Sugar Kane, the owner of Sugar Shack, Quartzite's popular watering hole. Unfortunately, she is also introduced to the Dullahan gang, a group of headless horsemen who terrorize the town.
Once she finally connects with Burke O'Hare, he tasks her with a seemingly simple, yet impossible job in exchange for the truth of her origin. In taking on the assignment, she gets in the middle of a gang war between the Dullahans and a dangerous group of mutants.
To make matters worse, Burke makes Jane participate in a dastardly science experiment to prove his genius, then gives her a breadcrumb in the form of the small town of Ehrenberg, where he may have robbed a few graves around her creation date. From there, Jane puts more pieces together, including the fact that part of her came from a Mexican lesbian named Lorena, part from a Jewish woman named Rachel, and part from a Native American woman named Hasaya. As she reaches out to those left behind who still remember these women, she begins to put the puzzle of her creation together, but even as she seeks her truth, Jane is constantly plagued by the Dullahan gang.
She presses forward by seeking out the best local witches, the Frog Mothers, a trio of Navajo women representing the mother, the maiden, and the crone. There, Jane experiences a bit of a vision quest where she sees the women from whom she was made, including a new one, Sadie. This name sends her to the human village of Daybreak, where she learns that the Dullahans not only "protect" the town from other monsters, but they take their taxes in turning the locals into headless horsemen when they lose one of their own gang. Yet another reason for Jane to hate the Dullahans and seek revenge.
When Jane finally discovers her complete origin story, the only thing keeping her in Quartzite is the fact that the Dullahans need a good ass-whupping. And Jane means to bring the pain, but will it finally bring her peace?
A Stitch in Crime is my least favorite book from Justin Robinson. Not only was I not fond of Jane as the lead character, but I just didn't really like the overall story and the vibe. In Robinson's stories with Nick Moss as the lead, they take place in and around Hollywood, so there are lots of fun references to Southern California, but those just weren't present in Jane's story. I found it tiresome that Jane would regularly muse how she was "being taken over by the green" representing her meat golem rages, to the point that it felt almost constant. I also found the inclusion of a homosexual sex scene, albeit brief, to be unnecessary. Additionally, one of the Frog Mothers was a non-binary individual and was referenced as "a person neither male nor female in a way white people could understand." Again, I didn't think her non-binary gender representation added anything to the story, and it felt shoe-horned in, but maybe that's just me.
Overall, this book was a miss for me and I don't think I want to read any further stories that follow Jane Stitch, but your mileage may vary.
