As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles

by Leslie Budewitz

It’s a tie! I can’t decide what I like best about Leslie Budewitz’s As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles: her winning way with words or her skill in creating an intricate plot. I felt a little funny as I crossed the Mexican desert in 90 degree temps on my trek north to the States as June began to press in. I was immersed in a cozy mystery with a Christmas backdrop complete with snow set in Jewel Bay, Montana, but that is what good fiction can do.

The main character is Erin, manager of the “Merc” aka Murphy’s Glacier Mercantile. She is weeks away from a wedding to fiancé Adam, a very likable guy. Erin has investigative skills that she truly enjoys exercising and which cause others to try to engage her in solving crimes based on her reputation. In this book she befriends a newly returned citizen of Jewel Bay, Merrily, who has relationship issues with her parents and is discovered dead on their property.

There are a lot of suspects for perpetrator of this crime, but the criminal can not be found until the past is revealed. Erin is indubitably nosy and that characteristic could help solve the crime and restore long broken relationships. It also could lead her into potentially deadly situations. Can she balance her curiosity with reason and avoid disaster?

I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Midnight Ink for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Mystery

Notes:  This book is good as a standalone. It is the second in the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, but I didn’t feel like I had missed out on anything. There is also a “cast of characters” if you get confused. The book concludes with a recipe section.

Publication:  June 8, 2018—Midnight Ink

Memorable Lines:

As surely as you can count on holidays sparking family crises, you can count on cocoa.

In these days of space stations and hybrid cars, stagecoaches seem like figments of Western movie makers’ imaginations, but the valley is criss-crossed with roads named for long-ago stages. They remind me to slow down, and take the long view.

Adam went downstairs to hook up the TV. Going wireless involves a lot of cables.