BLUEBERRY MUFFIN MURDER

Hannah Swenson should be making a bundle. As sole supplier of cookies for the Lake Eden (Minnesota) Winter Carnival, she and Lisa Herman, owners of The Cookie Jar, are selling Peanut Butter Melts and White Chocolate Supremes as fast as they can bake them. But when the Carnival’s star attraction, deceptively nasty Connie MacIntyre—known to cable TV fans everywhere as “Connie Mac,” America’s Cooking Sweetheart—gets her head bashed in right inside their pantry, detective Mike Kingston seals the store shut until further notice, leaving Hannah literally out in the cold. You’d think that getting The Cookie Jar reopened would be motive enough for her to look into Connie Mac’s murder. So should clearing her childhood friend Janie Burkholtz, who, as Connie Mac’s assistant and frequent target of her ill temper, is Mike’s favorite suspect. Or clearing Norman Rhodes, Mike’s second-favorite suspect—at least in part because Hannah just might prefer Norman’s friendly, familiar kisses to Mike’s more stirring embraces. But you’d be wrong each time, for Hannah seems far more interested in tweaking Mike’s adorable nose by investigating a murder he specifically warned her away from. And she succeeds brilliantly, placing herself in peril repeatedly as she breaks into hotel rooms, steals keys, pays after-hours visits to deserted shopping malls—and ultimately unmasks a killer.

A more engaging supporting cast and less-routine plots kept Hannah’s earlier adventures (Strawberry Shortcake Murder, 2000, etc.) a hair away from soap opera. This one lands her firmly in the suds.