The clever cheesemonger scores another triumph. The recipes are an extra treat.
Cheese, chocolate, and murder.
Willa Bauer opened Curds & Whey, a French-themed cheese shop in the Sonoma Valley, two years ago, and now she’s using the former kitchenette as a small cafe serving cheeseboards. As the book opens, she and her staffers—Mrs. Schultz, June, and Archie—are heading over to the grand opening of a new cakery that Archie’s ex-girlfriend Hope has created in the space formerly occupied by a bread bakery. When they arrive, though, Willa is shocked to see the name Chocolate Bliss in the window alongside Hope’s Cakery—that’s the name of the business Willa’s ex-fiancé, Pearce Brenner, and ex–best friend, Riley Stephens, opened together after Pearce dumped Willa nearly 10 years ago and used the engagement ring she threw at him to fund their chocolate business. Duncan, the shop manager, offers the customers free samples of Brenner Rum Crèmes, made with the rum Pearce created. Furious, Willa picks up the cheesecake she’d ordered, and then offers to deliver a box of chocolates destined for A.J. Stringer, the editor of the local paper, that Duncan mixed up with her order. When she goes to the newspaper office, she overhears veteran reporter Deandra telling aggressive newcomer Kevin that she’s quitting the paper because A.J. has been giving him her stories. As it turns out, Kevin eats the chocolates meant for Stringer and is found dead. Since the police can’t even be sure who the poisoned chocolates were meant for, Willa’s involvement makes her boyfriend, Detective Jay Heath, avoid her. Asking questions with the idea of clearing her name, Willa finds several suspects: the disappointed former bread maker; Deandra, who’s unhappy with Kevin; Duncan, who’s furious when Pearce tells him he won’t own the shop he was promised; and the owners of the town’s other candy store.
The clever cheesemonger scores another triumph. The recipes are an extra treat.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781250893949
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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