Mousse and Murder (An Alaskan Diner Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher: Berkley (May 5, 2020)
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages

Synopsis

A young chef might bite off more than she can chew when she returns to her Alaskan hometown to take over her parents’ diner in this charming first installment in a new cozy mystery series set in an Alaskan tourist town.

When Chef Charlie Cooke is offered the chance to leave San Francisco and return home to Elkview, Alaska, to take over her mother’s diner, she doesn’t even consider saying no. After all–her love life has recently become a Love Life Crumble, and a chance to reconnect with her roots may be just what she needs.

Determined to bring fresh life and flavors to the Bear Claw Diner, Charlie starts planning changes to the menu, which has grown stale over the years. But her plans are fried when her head cook Oliver turns up dead after a bitter and public fight over Charlie’s ideas–leaving Charlie as the only suspect in the case.

With her career, freedom, and life all on thin ice, Charlie must find out who the real killer is, before it’s too late.

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Review

I think this is going to be a fun series.  I don’t think that I have read a series set in Alaska, so I enjoyed learning a little more about the state and the landscape.  I have visited Alaska but it has been at least a decade.  The rural setting, the diner, and this picturesque town invite the reader and wishing that it was a real place to visit.  I’m sure there are several small towns like this one in Alaska, just not quite.

The cast of characters is small but complements the story.  Not all characters are given in depth lives in the story, but there is potential for them to become more a part of the cast in future books.  It is a shame that Oliver is killed right off the bat because I felt like there was more to his life that we could have learned about him and his past to understand why he was killed.  When the truth is revealed at the end about the “why” I felt like there should have been a little bit more.  I did figure out the killer only because almost all of the other characters had been eliminated.  Charlie seems to spend a lot of time away from the diner investigating Oliver’s murder, leaving her staff to manage the diner.  I did chuckle at the Trooper swearing in Charlie and friends as deputies.  It didn’t mean a hill of beans but, as Graham said, it made you feel better about nosing around in potentially unsafe places.

If you like cats then you will like Benny.  I was intrigued by this device that would feed him but also had a camera and other electronic toys for Charlie to play with him from the diner.  It was a good way to keep Benny entertained, and perhaps even Charlie and her co-workers.  Benny also saves the day in the end but you’ll have to read the book to find out how.

The story is not fast paced but will get you to where you need to go in due time.

We enjoyed this book and give it 3 1/2 paws.

About the Author

Camille Minichino is turning every aspect of her life into a mystery series. A retired physicist, she’s the author of 28 mystery novels in 5 series, with different pen names. Her next book is “Mousse and Murder,” May 2020, by Elizabeth Logan. She’s also written many short stories and articles. She teaches science at Golden Gate U. in San Francisco and writing workshops around the SF Bay Area.

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