Cookie Cutters and Murder

While searching for a series located in Maryland, I stumbled across the Cookie Cutter Shop Mysteries by Virginia Lowell. I read the first four before I realized I had read them before. The second reading did not improve them.

Olivia Greyson is the owner of The Gingerbread House, a shop that specializes in cookie cutters, aprons and all things cookie. Her frenetic partner Maddie Briggs bakes cookies at all hours of the day with very little sleep. I'd be worried that someone who bakes after only two  hours of sleep  might mistake sugar for salt. It's a wonder no one has been poisoned by the cookies.

In One Dead Cookie soap star and former hometown boy Trevor Lane returns with his manager Dougie Adair, another hometown boy. They make a big splash with Trevor's fans, but before long Trevor is found dead with his head bashed in, a cookie cutter brand on his cheek and positioned comfortably on Olivia's front porch - all without anyone seeing or hearing a thing. Now I know you have to suspend disbelief when you read mysteries, but this scenario is way beyond disbelief.

There are also two very annoying recurring characters Snoop - Sam Parnell, mail carrier, and Binnie Sloan, blogger who writes more fantasy than fact. Neither of them serves a real purpose except to be mean to Olivia for no apparent reason.

A shop specializing in cookie cutters sounds adorable, but is it viable? I think not.

The first book in the series is Cookie Dough or Die.