Showing posts with label Indiana - Maddie Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indiana - Maddie Day. Show all posts

Monday, July 9, 2018

Death Over Easy

Whenever I read the Country Store Mysteries by Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) I know I'd better have eaten breakfast. Robbie's country store and cafe, Pans ‘N Pancakes, in South Lick, Indiana, delivers mouthwatering meals. In Death Over Easy the annual Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival in neighboring Beanblossom is always a hit for Robbie’s cafĂ©. (Death Over Easy will be published on July 31.)

This year Robbie has converted the three bedrooms above her store to B&B rooms hoping to add another revenue stream to her business. Little does she know how many problems that will create. Her first guests include some of the performers and her father Roberto and his wife Maria, visiting from Italy. 

Robbie's boyfriend, Abe, plays in a band with a woman named Pia who has stirred up trouble right from the start. She gets into a very visible argument with Abe as well as an altercation with Sue, the festival organizer. It seems Pia, although and excellent musician. is not that popular.

When Pia is found strangled in the small covered bridge in an unincorporated area outside town, the
sheriff's department handles the case. Although Robbie's police officer friend Buck has been asked to be part of the investigation, she isn't really included, but that doesn't necessarily stop her.

Robbine finds Pia was not that nice a person and she also discovers her stepmother knew Pia in Italy. That puts her father and his wife into the frame. Robbie diligently seeks to keep them safe and find the killer.


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Saturday, July 16, 2016

Pancakes and More

In Maddie Day's new series Flipped For Murder we meet Robbie Jordan, owner of Pans 'N Pancakes. She is newly returned to her hometown in southern Indiana from years spent in California and has purchased a rundown country store and turned it into a popular cafe and kitchen shop.

Running the cafe is not all it's cracked up to be as she encounters her angry competitor from an adjacent town, the flamboyant mayor of South Lick, her late mother's former boyfriend and a dead body. Mayor's assistant and all around thorn in the side of the town, Stella Rogers, is found murdered in her home with one of Robbie's cheesy biscuits crammed in her mouth. Before she knows it, Robbie is a "person of interest" in the murder.

Stella knew everyone's secrets and it is up to Robbie to find out who killed her so she can clear herself. In the meantime, Robbie pieces together some threads from her late mother's life in South Lick, Indiana before she moved to California. What she finds surprises her.

I enjoyed this book and the characters. Robbie is down-to-earth and seems to enjoy waking up at 5:30 am to bake and prepare for her customers. I'm not sure I could be that sunny at that time of the day. Her breakfasts have me craving omelets and biscuits, too. Her desserts, baked by budding opera star Phil, are decadent and craveworthy. The plot advances with ease and without too much heroine in peril, which I dislike as a plot technique.

The next book in the series is Grilled for Murder and I am already reading it.