Cape Cod provides an appealing backdrop for a food-centric cozy replete with red herrings and likable sleuths.
Virtuoso pastry chef Lily Roberts, no mean detective, takes on another case of murder.
Lily never wanted to enter a made-for-TV cooking contest, but she has no choice when Bernadette Murphy, her best friend, and Rose Campbell, her maternal grandmother—who owns the Victoria-on-Sea B&B whose grounds are graced by Lily’s shop, Tea by the Sea—enter her in the contest. On America Bakes! each episode takes place at a different bakery, and one will be proclaimed the winner at the end of the season. Lily quickly learns that America Bakes! is nowhere near as civilized as The Great British Baking Show when director Josh Henshaw and his assistant, Reilly Miller, arrive at Tea by the Sea and deliberately begin to stir up tensions. Lily’s helpers, Cheryl and her daughter, Marybeth, will be serving the food; the judges are New York City baker Claudia D’Angelo, bad-tempered English chef Tommy Greene, and Scarlet McIntosh, who’s just a pretty face. Although Josh drives Lily crazy with his demands, they manage to get through the first day with nothing worse than an uncomfortable visit from Lily’s competitor, Allegra Griffin, the unpleasant owner of the North Augusta Bakery. The second day is a different story. Marybeth trips and dumps tea in Tommy’s lap, causing a scene that’s just what the showrunners want, especially when Cheryl berates Tommy, saying she saw him trip Marybeth on purpose. When Tommy is found dead in Lily’s kitchen, his head bashed with her marble rolling pin, Cheryl is an obvious suspect. Lily, Bernie, and Rose use gossip, deep-dive computer searches, and observations of the bickering crew to unmask the killer.
Cape Cod provides an appealing backdrop for a food-centric cozy replete with red herrings and likable sleuths.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-49673-769-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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Tidy procedural with a canine accent.
When a child goes missing in the wilderness, even more sinister crimes are uncovered.
Deputy Mattie Wray and her K-9 partner, the German shepherd Robo, are summoned from Timber Creek, Colorado, to Washington state for an ultrasensitive search-and-rescue mission. River Allen, the 9-year-old son of actress Chrystal Winter, has wandered away from the movie set where his mother is filming a new movie and into the region east of Olympic National Park. Winter’s revelation that she recently received death threats raises the possibility that this was an abduction and not a simple disappearance. Other questions surround the matter, like why nanny Sally Kessler wasn’t with River at the time. The timing is very bad for Mattie, who’s a week away from her wedding to faithful beau Dr. Cole Walker, but duty calls. Mattie and Robo are part of a large operation involving multiple other pairs. Mizushima’s ninth Timber Creek K-9 mystery rolls slowly, with rich descriptions of the rugged terrain and the procedural details of a large-scale search-and-rescue mission, particularly those involving K-9 partners. There are interviews with the handful of individualists who live in the area, including the reclusive Edward Campbell and the blind Cecil Moore. The restless Cole, who has a contentious relationship with his family, joins Mattie and Robo on the rugged mission. A dark discovery changes the search and amps up its urgency. Series fans will likely be pleased that the novel ends sweetly, with the anticipated wedding.
Tidy procedural with a canine accent.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781639108947
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Despite the title, the by-the-numbers dishing and scheming are anything but colorful.
The wedding of a couple of people who know each other very well indeed forms the backdrop to Davis’ fourth Pen and Ink mystery.
All the 500 guests gathered for the Georgetown nuptials wish the best for the happy couple even though romance novelist Jacqueline Liebhaber has already been married twice, professor John Maxwell three times, and each of them once to the other, in a marriage that was shattered years ago by the kidnapping of their young daughter, Caroline, who was never found. Now that they’re getting back together, book reviewer Margarite Herbert-Grant joins a crowd of authors who know her rapier tongue all too well—debut government-intrigue storyteller Buzz Powers; literary novelist Arthur Bedlingham; his assistant, unpublished novelist Evan McDowell; and romance novelist Gabriella Archambeau (though not her husband; reclusive bestselling thriller writer Griffin Corbyn’s sent his excuses)—to celebrate, and waitress and aspiring reporter Cara Melton, who’s somehow crashed the party, demands to know just how John and Jacquie feel about Caroline’s loss. Florrie Fox, the adult-coloring-book creator who manages Color Me Read, the bookstore John owns, does her best to protect the couple from Cara’s intrusive questions. Despite her earlier brushes with homicide, Florrie can’t stop one of the wedding guests from feeding Evan enough THC–laced brownies to make him a perfect candidate for drowning in John’s swimming pool. But every cloud has a silver lining, and the horrid Cara’s stabbed to death as well. The mystery is perfunctory, the assembled authors drawn with a cartoonist’s brush, and the killer forgettable, but veteran Davis keeps a particularly deft surprise, along with half a dozen recipes, in reserve.
Despite the title, the by-the-numbers dishing and scheming are anything but colorful.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2465-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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