An engaging cozy best enjoyed with a plate of cookies.
A California-based mystery delivers deceit, murder, and lots of cupcakes.
Twenty-something Emory Martinez, a professional accountant and highly skilled amateur baker, wakes up one morning on the tile floor of the guest bathroom in her Huntington Beach condo. She is seriously hung over and has no recollection of how she wound up on the floor. The last thing she remembers is being out for drinks with her best friend, Tori Carlton, and Tori’s “mysterious cousin,” Randall. Em hopes desperately that her husband, Philip, a police officer working the graveyard shift, hasn’t seen her passed out. It turns out that Philip never came home. Em’s repeated attempts to reach Tori by phone to find out what happened last night go straight to voicemail. Concerned that she and her friend may have been secretly drugged, Em bikes the five miles to Tori’s Costa Mesa home. There, she finds Philip and Tori passionately entangled on the couch. A knockdown, drag-out fight between Tori and Em spills outside, is witnessed by neighbors, and is broken up by the police. Which is very bad news for Em when, later that night, Tori is murdered and Em discovers the body. She is considered the prime suspect, which means it will be up to her to find the real killer. But first she must help her twin sister, Carrie, who is catering an elaborate children’s birthday party. Em is the amiable narrator of a mystery that should find a special fan base among foodies. The twisty plotline shares prime time with Em’s running descriptions of party cuisine, drinks, and imaginative baked goods. Davis populates the narrative with an assortment of eccentric characters. The two “Stoner Dudes” (Steve Miller and Stan Miller) who live above Tori’s apartment turn out to be far more intriguing than they first appear to be. And wealthy matron Matilda Skyler (“Please call me Tillie”) adds delightful, laugh-out-loud comic relief. Character development is rather superficial, but there is enough action, including a few surprises—plus baking—to maintain a steady momentum. The breezy book concludes with a collection of unique recipes. Cowgirl Quencher Mocktail Cupcakes anyone?
An engaging cozy best enjoyed with a plate of cookies.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 269
Publisher: Cinnamon & Sugar Press
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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