Monthly Archives: February 2020

This series has quickly become one of my favorites. It is crazy funny with lots of characters who hi-jinks are outrageous. Each book is better than the last and since they are all great, that is saying something.

In this story, Val (the owner of Pie Town) has allowed one of her employees the use of Pie Town after hours for a poetry slam. There are a number of poets present, including Professor Starke. After the event, the professor is found murdered just a few steps away from the bakery.

Val and her fantastic pie crust specialist and landlord, Charlene are on the case. They are the Baker Street Bakers and usually solve much smaller crimes. However, when a murder threatens Pie Town, they gear up for the case.

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This is the ninth book in the Maggie Hope mystery series. In this story, Maggie has turned her life upside down. Because of her spying efforts in the War, and because of her near miss at being one of a serial killers victims, she has turned to something other than fighting the war.

She is still doing her part by diffusing unexploded bombs that litter the landscape in London. It is a hard job and one that is generally filled by conscientious objectors. A number of these are the British citizens of Italian descent. Rather than fight their families in the war, they turn to other ways of helping.

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It’s the holiday season in Sun City West, the retirement community where most of the action in this series takes place. It starts with Halloween, moves rapidly to Thanksgiving and finishes off with Christmas.

What better way to celebrate the season than dressing up your dog to be a contestant in the Precious Pooches Holiday Extravaganza costume contest? At least, that is what Sophie Kimball (know to most as Phee) finds that is her mother’s way of celebrating the holidays.

Streeman, the dog in question, throws everything for a loop when he finds a dead body in the backyard of the house just behind his owner’s. Phee is brought in to investigate even though she is just an accountant at a private detective agency. That doesn’t make a bit of difference to her mother who insists Phee must have some investigative skills that rubbed off in the course of her work.

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This is a series that I started mid-way through and had no problems picking it up. I did go back and read a couple of the first books as well. Having said all of that, I believe that this book is more transitional and it would be helpful to read some of the earlier books first. You can read it stand-alone but some of the nuances of the relationships might be better understood with a background of the storyline.

Mattie is medicolegal death investigator (medical examiner) who assists the forensic pathologist in figuring out cause of death. In her case, she is also responsible for assisting the police with forensic evidence found at the scene if a crime has been committed.

Mattie teams up often with her husband, Steve, who is a homicide detective. In this story, she doesn’t work with him as much as previous books. She is more or less out there on her own and it proves to be a serious issue.

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This is the first book I have read by author Karen Baugh Menuhin. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I am glad I took the chance with the book.

It was both funny and a good whodunnit cozy mystery. I laughed out loud many times during my reading and, while I figured out the whodunnit, I wasn’t quite so sure of the whydunnit.

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I will start by saying that the characters in this book are way over the top. They are almost too much to be believed. At first, I was put off by it but then, I realized that it was meant to be that way.

I took it as a book that was like the first black and white movies, where the good guys were really good and the bad ones were horrible. Once I started looking at it from that point of view, I was able to relax and enjoy it as a bit of comedy mixed in with an interesting mystery.

Felicity is rich and incredibly smart. Maybe the smartest person you will ever meet (see what I mean?) She is pulled away from her home in England to look into murders which have occurred in Placer, Montana.

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This is the first book I have read in the Casey Duncan series. It is not, however, the first book I have read by author Kelley Armstrong.

With little information about what the book and series were about, I had some problems with the overall concept and with some of the dialog.

I think if I had started with the first book and read through, this book would make complete sense. However, as I often dive mid-stream into series, I am used to trying to figure out things on the fly. I was able to but some of the story was not as well explained for a first time reader.

Casey Duncan and her husband Eric Dalton (who has an incredible case of selective potty mouth) have gone off for a break in the woods. Casey comes across a dead woman who has a baby in her arms who is still alive.

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This was an interesting story. While as a mystery, I found it very easy to solve, I was surprised by the use of journaling as a way to make a living on social media.

Or not. Mandy Meadows and her daughter are becoming more highly ranked on a video social media platform (you can guess which one, though the author never said so.) For all the followers that they have, they are making only a few hundred dollars a month. Kind of puts making your fortune on social media in the right perspective.

There is a murder and Mandy is a suspect. She goes from doing her videos and selling stickers to her job as a barista at a hospital to trying to scrounge enough money to keep heart and home together.

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