I just finished this new to me cozy with a food blogging theme.  It caught my eye, since I read a lot of food blogs I thought I’d find it fun and interesting.  The main character, Hope,  is a former mainstream publication writer, who left the big city to return home and now runs a homemaking/life style blog with a focus on cooking.  Hope is drawn into sleuthing when her sister Claire becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a rival real estate agent.  The chief of police Ethan is the resident hunk, who may or may not be a love interest or permanently in friend status.  There are lots of characters here, so many suspects to follow up on as the case develops, and the bodies multiply.  I really did enjoy this one and will read the next in the series.  Just a hint, read slowly in the beginning, many characters are introduced quickly – I had to go back and reread to get straight who was who.

Sorrow Bound is book 3 in the Aector McAvoy series by David Mark.  The Kindle English Mystery Club is reading the first this month, which I had already read, so I continued on with the series.  In this book Aector’s love for his wife and family are his greatest weakness and we are left not really knowing how this will all end.  There are a series of particularly gruesome murders that are connected to a man who is now so disabled he can’t possibly be committing them.  As Aector attempts to unwind the past events and the connections to the current victims, his wife Roisin, stumbles into the middle of a drug ring operation being investigated by compromised officer.  Very suspenseful read, I can’t wait for the next one.  I love the characters of Aector, Roisin, and his super Trish Pharaoh in the series.

Violet Tendencies, the second in the A Rose City Mystery series, is becoming one of my favorite series.  I love the Portland setting (I was born there) and the flower and wine shop theme.  In this installment, Britta and her Aunt Elin are getting ready for their part in the cities Rose Festival by creating a huge float for the parade.  A militant group of protesters are trying to stop the parade and lines are drawn with the police keeping order, until someone ends up dead, right on Britta and Elin’s float.  Plenty of suspects and possible motives to keep you guessing.  I really enjoyed this fun cozy mystery.

I’ve had Kill the Father on my Kindle for quite a while, but just got around to reading it.  The case surrounds a missing child, a murdered mother, and a father as the chief suspect.  The case seems too open and shut and the child has not appeared,  so a somewhat extraordinary expert is called on, a man who was himself an abducted child and  despite his obvious PTSD and various mental health issues now works on cases as a private investigator.  His partner in this endeavor is an officer on  leave herself after a case that went terribly wrong resulting in multiple deaths.  She is suffering physically and mentally from the effects of the bombing.  These two damaged individuals have to negotiate a treacherous case without being sure who they can trust.  This was well written and quite engaging.  I would just say that it needed some editing because it ran a little too long, over 500 pages is a bit long for a thriller, and about the last 100 I just wanted  to get to the resolution.

The Hanging Valley is book 4 in the Inspector Banks series.  In this book in the series, Banks travels to a picturesque community where a fells walker has found a faceless corpse on his hike. Obviously a murder, Banks soon uncovers links to a past murder that was never solved and a community member who disappeared without a trace.  There are  wealthy brother landowners, displaced farmers, newly landed recently divorced gentry, an unhappy wife and bully boy husband rounding out the cast in the community.  Very well written mystery, richly developed characters with a sense of despair that comes through, and an engaging story line.  I have many more to read in this long running series.