Die Buying is the first in the Mall Cop series. This series was recommended to me multiple times by multiple cozy readers but I’ve never picked it up because,quite frankly, the theme did nothing for me, a mall cop or malls in general just didn’t seem appealing. I really regret now that I didn’t because this series ended up having a rather short run, a 3 book series, and it really is excellent. The protagonist is a veteran on military medical discharge. She was an MP and hasn’t had any luck finding civilian police work and took the closest work to it. The story line is well done and there is an interesting cast of supporting characters. A well written engaging cozy mystery. I am going to finish the series.
Cake and Punishment and Batter Off Dead are books 1 and 2 in the A Southern Cake Baker Mystery Series. I picked up both of these from the library. Sophia Cummings, a trained pastry chef has returned home from NY to recuperate from her broken heart. While home she gets roped into providing cakes for upcoming events as the town’s bakery recently closed. She also stumbles over a dead body or two and gets embroiled in murder investigations. This is fun series and walks a really nice line between being light-hearted enough for a cozy audience and to build that warm homey feeling without becoming silly. I enjoyed these two but I am not sure if there will be more in the series or not as the last one was published in 2018.
My Sister’s Bones is psychological mystery with an investigative journalist who travels the world, probably to avoid looking to hard at the issues that await her at home. The death of her mother triggers a return to home and confrontations head on with her own PTSD from the horrors she has encountered both in her work and in being raised with a violent drunk. She begins to see a small child next door in an ostensibly childless household and no one believes her. The story is told in her interviews in the police station and in events as they happen. There were some really good elements here but somehow as a whole I found just an okay read. A mash up perhaps of Dorothy Whipple’s Charlotte and Geoffrey from They were Sisters, some Girl on a Train, and Room?
Rosemary’s Gravy was an okay cozy mystery more focused on the romantic sub plots than the mystery. I think I probably am not the target demographic for this Hollywood celebrity chef themed cozy.
How to Bake a Murder is a cute short cozy. First in a series featuring a grandmother who is hosting her very reluctant grandmother to give her daughter a break from some teenage rebellion time. The Grandmother, Cookie, runs a bakery which she lives above and is currently barely breaking even. A regular customer dies in the shop and now rumors abound, in the midst of all this a developer swans in with offers to buy up the shop. Cookie wants to clear her name, figure out who killed her customer, and try to hang on to her shop. There are also some romantic side plots. Cute cozy, on the shorter side, currently free as a Kindle book.
The Angry Grey Cat Reads 