The Power of Christie

Never underestimate the impact Agatha Christie has on today's cozy mystery genre. In Ellie Alexander's On Thin Icing, the Christie legacy is prominent. Jules Capshaw has expanded her bakery, Torte, to include catering meals as well as baking delicious treats. She is asked to prepare meals for a weekend retreat at a lodge in the mountains by her friend Lance, director of the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Bringing along Sterling as her sous chef, she loads every possible kitchen appliance, including a pressure cooker and other supplies into her four-wheel drive vehicle and heads to Lake in the Woods, 5,000 feet above sea level. Naturally as they begin to climb into the mountains a snow storm is brewing. The road is treacherous and snow covered, but they finally make it to the Lodge.

Lodge owner Mercury Rule greets them an assigns them each a cabin

outside of the Lodge. All of the guests will be staying in cabins away from the lodge, but the meals will be served in the Lodge. Jules is confronted with a drunk and abusive bartender immediately as well as a surprise guest - her estranged husband Carlos.

As the blizzard heightens in intensity and fallen trees block the roads, the Lodge becomes isolated in the snow storm.  And then Jules discovers a body stuffed in a deep freezer.While cooking up wonderfully delicious foods, Jules sifts through the suspects, including Carlos, and finally unmasks the killer.

I enjoy this series because never in a millions years could make the wonderful baked goods created at Torte. The wood-fired brick oven used in the Lodge will, I'm sure, be making an appearance in upcoming books.

The first book in the series is Meet Your Baker. 

Too Much Stuff

The Wrong Stuff by Sharon Fiffer features Chicago-based antique picker Jane Wheel. Jane is obsessed with vintage flowers, Bakelite buttons, old report cards, and ephemera from all eras, essentially she is a junk collector. Her garage and all rooms in her house are crammed with bits of other people's lives.

In The Wrong Stuff she is pondering becoming an associate with her friend Tim Lowry, an antiques dealer, or joining former police detective Brian Oh's private investigation company. When Oh's wife Claire is arrested for murdering another antiques dealer, Jane combines both offers and tries to solve the case.

I plodded through the first two books in this series in the hopes that I could get out from under all the junk Jane collects. Finally this book has seen the light and there is not as much description of the junk Jane is viewing nor the running monologue in her head. There's still too much of the bickering parents - Don and Nellie, but the story is interesting and the plot is intricate.

Tim and Jane travel to Michigan to Campbell and LaSalle, an idyllic community of artisans and furniture crafters, to discover how Claire's one-of-a-kind Westman dresser delivered there to be restored became a fake. When another murder takes place on the property, Jane and Tim are drawn into this case. Is there a connection between the two deaths? Jane, Tim and in disguise Brian Oh try to connect the dots.

I keep hoping these books will draw away from all the junk descriptions and move up a level. So far The Wrong Stuff was a good step in that direction. I hope to read the next book in the series, but I need a break from all the junk first. The first book in the series is Killer Stuff.

The Who-Dun-Him Inn

Take a trip to Utah and there you will find The Who-Dun-Him Inn owned by Vicki Butler. Each bedroom is named and decorated in the style of a famous mystery author. In Snowed Inn by Heather Horrocks, it's Vicki's plan to use actors and stage a murder mystery each weekend for her guests' enjoyment and participation.

Unfortunately when the guests arrive - a literary agent, his young girlfriend, her jealous soon-to-be-ex husband and his many disgruntled authors, the air is tingled with hostility and anger. Complicating matters are Vicki's twin sister Liz and Grandma Ross, a pistol-packing granny on the hunt for a man.

The guest of honor Georgio Calabria and his girlfriend insist on staying in the Magnum P.I. carriage house behind the Inn. Vicki argues with him to no avail and they trudge outside in the snow to the accommodation.

As the play begins during dinner, a blizzard rages outside cutting the Inn off from the town below. The play centers on a cheating husband and, of course, Georgio is the fictional focus or is it fiction. An unexpected guest appears and threatens Georgio with murder. When a real murder takes place, all eyes point to the unexpected guest who has now disappeared.

This book takes a long time to unravel the plot and there are way too many characters - authors, actors, neighborhood friends and family. I struggled with the names of all the characters and had to refer back several times. The concept of an Inn with rooms decorated with mystery authors or characters is an interesting one for me and so is the mystery play.

Snowed Inn is the first book in the series.

Mayhem at the Orient Express - Not Agatha Christie

As a huge Agatha Christie fan, this book title hooked me immediately. Kylie Logan's Mayhem at the Orient Express takes place in Put-in-Bay in Lake Erie. New B&B owner Bea Cartwright, winery owner Kate Wilder and aging hippy cat lover Chandra Morrisey are ordered to form a book club known as the League of Literary Ladies by a local judge. They cannot get along and have been in court numerous times to the dismay of local magistrate Alvin Littlejohn.

At their first meeting they are joined by Luella Zak and they decide to read Murder on the Orient Express. When the discussion ends, they decide to walk to The Orient Express, a new Chinese in town to order everyone's favorite orange/peanut chicken. What they discover is Peter Chan, the owner, dead on the floor with a knife through his heart.

After speaking with the police, the Literary Ladies wind up back at the B&B as a snowstorm brews outside. Bea's first guest has arrived and another stranger appears out of the storm asking for a room. With the power out at most of the homes and businesses on the island and the ferries not running, the League of Literary Ladies holds up in the B&B tickled to be living through a real life murder mystery. More guests arrive and before too long their numbers parallel

those on the famous train.

Snowbound like the passengers on the Orient Express train, are the ladies in the company of a murderer? These use their wits and emulate Hercule Poirot's "little grey cells" to solve the mystery.

I enjoyed this book, mostly because of the witty play on the original book by Agatha Christie, but also the characters are funny and realistically written. This is the first in the series and I am looking forward to the other books. 

Faberge Eggs and Murder

In Blood Rubies by Jane Cleland, antiques expert Josie Prescott is asked to appraise a one-of-a-kind Faberge Spring Egg snow globe with ruby red tulip gems. Before she is able to appraise the snow globe, it is found smashed beyond repair next to the body of TV show investment guru Jason.

In beautiful New Hampshire Ana Yartsin, budding reality TV show chef and owner of the snow globe, is filming an episode of her show as she bakes a Faberge wedding cake for Jason and his fiance Heather, a friend of Ana's. Complicating the relationship is Ana's brother Peter who was previously engaged to Heather. There are plenty of suspects in Jason's murder as his financial advice was not always sound and he followed the philosophy of "caveat emptor" - buy beware, but who would smash the incredible and priceless Faberge snow globe?

As Josie sifts through the fragments to determine if the snow globe was authentic, she discovers it is a fake. But where is the real one or was there even a real snow globe? Ana insists it has been in her family for decades and that her father brought it with him from Michigan to New Hampshire to be appraised.

Josie's staff eagerly uses their contacts in the appraisal world to discover who could have made a fake good enough to pass as an original. When a Russian artifacts expert from Boston is killed in a car accident on his way to see Josie, there seems to be more to the story than meets the eye. Incredibly the expert had appraised a Fabege snow globe quite recently, and Josie is convinced it must be the one she was scheduled to review. Rare as they are, it is highly unlikely that two snow globes would appear in the antiques world at the same time.

I enjoyed this book and the entire series. I'm sure everyone would love to discover a valuable antique in their own home. It's interesting to see how appraisals are used to authenticate antiques.

The first book in the series is Consigned to Death.

A Wedding Cake Mystery

Piper Donovan, aspiring actress, returns home to New Jersey to bake wedding cakes at her mother's bakery, Icing on the Cupcake, between acting jobs. The latest book, Footprints in the Sand by Mary Jane Clark, shifts locations to Sarasota, Florida, for Piper's cousin's wedding.

When Piper and her parents arrive they discover Kathy's friend Shelley is missing. When an elderly neighbor reports seeing a man with a woman's body tossed over his shoulder, no one is sure she saw what she thinks she saw. But when Shelley's car is discovered with blood on the front seat, the police become concerned.

Meanwhile Piper encounters a young Amish man making large brightly painted disks he calls "hex signs." She orders one for the bride and groom and recognizes that young Levi is troubled. When she tries to draw him out, he shuts down.

We later learn Levi has a secret, but he is terrified to reveal it because he had been drinking. Levi is

on his rumspringa and has been indulging in what the outside world has to offer. Trying to protect his sister Miriam as well as keeping the secret leads to danger.

Wanting to ease her cousin's concerns before the wedding, Piper starts to ask questions.Why would anyone deliberately want to kill Shelley? Did Roz Golubock actually see the murder? Is she in danger now? What is making the young Amish man so jittery? Why was his cell phone found at the burial site?

I enjoyed this series especially for the relationship between Piper and her parents. Her father Vin is a worry-wort who fears the worst in every situation and her mother Terri is a "glass is half full" type of person despite beginning to lose her sight to macular degeneration. Piper returning to the bakery has tapped into a creative side that enables her to
decorate and sell gorgeous wedding cakes while she waits for other acting roles.

The first book in the series is To Have and to Kill.

On the Road to Threadville

A new series I am reading takes place in Elderberry Bay, Pennsylvania. The first book in the series by Janet Bolin is Dire Threads and features Willow Vanderling the owner of  In Stitches embroidery shop - not any embroidery shop, but a high tech machine embroidery shop. Threadville, as the town is called features many shops related to sewing and draws tourists by the busload.

Willow hopes to improve the Blueberry Cottage on her property, but runs into problems with the zoning inspector Mike Krawbach. He's prefer to condemn the building and convert the area into an ATV trail. When Mike is found dead on Willow's property, the mayhem begins.

I can't decide if I liked this book as there are some extremely stereotypical characters in the book, such as the sheriff, who is called Uncle Andy, his grumpy wife Aunt Betty, the handsome handyman Clay Fraser and the eccentric beekeeper Smythe Castor. The town seems hostile to Willow and the other shopkeepers, even though tourists visit regularly, drawn by the shops. Yet when the river behind Blueberry Cottage starts to rise, everyone is out filling sandbags.

And whoa, there's way too much going on in this book including a fundraising memorial for the dead guy, a dinner dance the next day and the flooding.The plot is convoluted and leads in several directions before it is resolved. I'm not giving up on the series though, so I plan to read the next one in hopes that it improves.
Click here for other books in this series.  

Mystery Book Club Solves Murder

When the Ashton Corners (Alabama) Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society in Erika Chase's Read and Buried invited an award-winner novelist to their meeting, no one expected to be involved in murder. Derek Alton had been an award winner 18 years in the past, but he had a sequel planned that he claimed would be a blockbuster.

Club organizer Lizzie Turner meets with Derek over dinner to discuss the club members, but he becomes obnoxious and she leaves. The next day he arrives, remorseful, at Lizzie house. In a flash, someone shoots him through one of her windows.

Suspicion falls on Lizzie's friends.  Derek seems familiar to some of the residents of Ashton Corners, but no one recognizes his name. Lizzie and friends start digging and find out that Derek was not who he pretended to be. In the meantime Lizzie's boyfriend, Police Chief Mark Dreyfus, has been acting aloof and she doesn't know why.

The Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society members are a mixed bag of
people. They include reading specialist Lizzie,  the former police chief Bob Miller, third-grade teacher Sally-Jo Baker, local attorney Jacob Smith, grand dame of the community Molly Mathews, pregnant 19-year-old Stephanie Lowe and high school punk teen Andie Mason. Their love of mysteries and cheese straws (hence the name) has brought them together. They also act as a real-life mystery solving club.

I enjoyed this book and I am starting the next in the series. One of the elements I enjoyed most is the Reading List at the end of each book. Each chapter has a quote from a book and some of the characters talk about other books they have read. Having them listed at the back of the book gives readers an opportunity to find new authors. I only wish the recipe for cheese straws was included.

The first book in the series is A Killer Read.

Fudge Conquers All

Mackinac Island has always held some allure for me, but after reading All Fudged Up by Nancy Coco, I'm not so sure about the residents of the island. They are either very provincial or unfriendly. For instance when Allie McMurphy returns to her grandfather's hotel, she is treated like an incomer, especially when she finds the body of her grandfather's archenemy in her utility closet. The annoying thing is people take to wearing purple or green ribbons to silently show which side they are on - the Jessops or the McMurphys.

This was too Hatfields and McCoys for me, but I plodded on lured by the fudge recipes. There are also two handsome men in Allie's dreams. One is Rex Manning, gorgeous police officer always at her beck and call, and the other is equally handsome Trent Jessop (yes from that family). I'm anxious to see how the author handles this Rex-Allie-Trent triangle with the wild card of college friend Jennifer added to the mix.

Another annoying issue includes the Historic Commission board which argues with Allie about paint
colors and locks installed on the hotel, while green lighting an ultramodern hotel being built by Paige Jessop (yes that family). Now I live in a small town and I understand the constant battle between old timers and newcomers, but this borders on obstruction. And for a community that thrives on outside visitors, I find calling them "fudgies" annoying as well, Maybe I am not going to be going to Mackinac Island, if this is a true depiction of the residents.

Several murders follow and Allie is eyed suspiciously by the purple ribbon crowd (Jessop side) although Rex doesn't think she should be a suspect. A rather convoluted plot ensures leading to shipwrecked booty and Prohibition. I'd say if it weren't for the dreams of fudge in my imagination, I would not be reading these books. Click here for other books by the author.

How to Host. . .

I have read many mysteries in my life, but I have never read one with a person who runs a crime scene cleaning service as one of the leading character (or any character for that matter). How to Host a Killer Party by Penny Warner features Presley Parker, event planner, and Brad Matthews, crime scene cleaner, and hunky to boot.

This series takes place in California, and is worth a laugh or two. I'm especially fascinated by the crime scene cleaner - ugh - think about that job.

Presley, downsized from her job, decides to use her childhood experience planning events with her mother Veronica Parker, to start her own event planning company. She cobbles together an array of freelancers to help her with the events. Presley is unexpectedly called on to plan a "surprise wedding" for Mayor Green and his socialite fiancee after the previous event planner is found dead.

As a possible suspect in the murder of  the other planner, Presley is anxious about pulling off the

perfect wedding, even if it is being held on Alcatraz. To no one's surprise, the prospective bride is furious about the wedding and storms off, only to be found dead the next day. There are suspects galore, but somehow the police seem to focus on Presley again.

There is some funny banter between Presley and Brad, but overall she is a little too ditzy for my liking. She wanders into dark corners and deserted places knowing full well there is a killer on the loose. I want to shout at her to use caution, but I think she is blindly going to follow her own path.

There are several other books in the series and I have read them as well. I did warm up to Presley, but the murderers are a little too obvious. For more books by this author, click here.