CASE OF THE BLEUS

A dead cheesemaker provides a motive for murder.

Willa Bauer’s dream came true when she opened Curds & Whey, her French-themed cheese shop in the Sonoma Valley. Now her mentor, Max Dumas, who died in a car accident, is to be honored at the Northwest Cheese Invitational for his body of work, especially his famous Church Bleu, which won the best cheese award an unprecedented three times. In town for the event are Kendall Waterstone, Claire Ingram, and Pepper Sheffield, Willa’s former co-workers from Max's store, along with newcomer Freddie Yang, who together plan on buying Max’s Church Cheese shop from his daughter, Maxine, who had a love/hate relationship with her father and has even less interest in cheese. The only problem is that Max never revealed the secret for making Church Bleu to any of them while he was alive, saying only that he'd leave it to his favorite cheesemonger. When Max’s will is read before the invitational, it doesn’t mention Willa, but he did give her his copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca when she set off on her own. Undeterred, the rest of the group and Hugo Potts, president of the board of the Northwest Cheese Society, continue to squabble over who Max would have given the secret recipe to. When Kendall dies from an allergic reaction, Willa’s friend Roman, who sold the honey-based mead that killed her, is blamed. Handsome Detective Heath is not best pleased when Willa blurts out that her death must be murder. Since Max loved puzzles, Willa isn’t surprised when a posthumous letter arrives from him with hints about using Rebecca to find the secrets of Church Bleu. Placed in an awkward and dangerous position, Willa turns detective.

Plenty of cheese lore enriches a mystery that’s puzzling in more ways than one.