Joanna Campbell Slan (who, full disclosure, is a friend of mine) has a new book out in the Kiki Lowenstein series! I stumbled across her books when I found the third one available for Kindle Unlimited, immediately headed to the library to catch up on the first two, and have read every single one that came out soon. And absolutely oodles of the short stories because I love spending time in the world of characters she's created.
Purple Blame Game, the latest, has Kiki and her friends at Time in a Bottle scramblikng to crochet a hundred bunnies for hospitalized children. The book opens with the discovery of a murder victim in the alley behind the store, then the plot doubles back to the conflict filled days before the event, a tactic I think works really well in cozy mysteries. We're not spending the whole book waiting for the shoe to drop, and we still get all of the important information when we need to get it. There's a lot more I'd like to praise, but I'm avoiding spoilers here. There's lots of crafting, a situation that gets misinterpreted and causes problems, friction between the charcters. And Myrt is back -- which I love because I missed her when the was gone from the series!
And then there at the books by people I don't know that publishers sent me to review....
A Cultivated Corpse by Debra Sennefelder
I've manged to miss one or two of the Food Blogger mystery series over the years, but I've enjoyed every one that I've read. This time around, members of the local garderning club are clashing over how to restore the grounds of a historic house. The conflict quickly escalates to murder and Hope and her friends are drawn into the investigation. The mystery is compled and satisfying. I enjoyed this one, but it felt like a couple of characters were absent. One of the biggest draws for me has always been Hope's bustling day to day life.
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