Songs of Wine and Murder

by Lynn Cahoon

Every good cozy mystery has a focus and a crime to be solved. The plot in Songs of Wine and Murder centers around a band competition as part of the Moonstone Beach festival to be held in  South Cove, a town which has both commuters and businesses that depend on tourists. Jill owns a combo coffee shop and bookstore; her fiancé Greg is the police chief. In this book, a band member that no one likes is found dead. There are many suspects after it is determined that the death is a homicide, not a drug overdose or a suicide.

Jill has to put in a lot of work hours during the festival as she supervises both the coffee shop and a food truck. Jill is a great boss, giving her workers full benefits and treating them with respect. During the festival she takes orders and provides her staff with meals from the town’s only full-service restaurant. Greg has to put in extra long hours along with his officers as they interview suspects and others who might have information about the murder. Jill tries to stay out of the investigation, but she stumbles across clues and conversations that help Greg.

The mayor’s wife can be over-the-top mean if she doesn’t get her way. She gets very angry when she thinks her nephew is being treated unfairly in the competition, and she blames that and everything else she can think of on Jill and Greg. Jill has a number of friends who are involved in this story, and the reader gets to know them well. My favorite of her employees is Deek. He is a good looking young man with blond dreadlocks and violet eyes who has really grown over the course of the series. He is an aspiring writer who takes the bookstore seriously and also has lots of very good ideas for managing events and pushing the coffee shop/bookstore through PR efforts. He is somewhat intimidated by Greg referring to him as “Police Dude.” Her staff member, Toby, works as a cop and a barista.  An attractive guy, he can’t understand why Tilly, a new hire at the shop, says she has never met him. He claims hey were an “item” in high school. Which one of them is lying?  

The murder is solved…until new information comes to light opening the investigation up again.  It was a great twist to the story; just as Greg and Jill think they can relax and resume planning for their wedding, they are thrown back into the chaos of “whodunit?”

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 4/5

Category: Mystery

Notes: 1. #15 in the Tourist Trap Mystery Series. It includes some humor, some mystery, and some relationships—new and old. Songs of Wine and Murder was fun for me, but not Cahoon’s best work. I am not recommending it as a standalone, but if you are a fan of the Tourist Trap Mystery Series, you will probably enjoy it.

  2. Includes a recipe for “Jill’s Neptune Salad Wrap” as a healthy replacement for all the fish and chips Jill devours in this book.

Publication: June 6, 2023—Kensington

Memorable Lines:

The fight was over. Neither participant looked victorious, which was what happened most times when people were in love. Everyone felt the pain of the fight, not just the loser.

“The one thing I can promise you about relationships is that as soon as you start thinking the other person can read your mind, you’re in trouble.”

I delivered Harrold and Aunt Jackie’s meals and noticed Lille had put in two slices of cherry pie that I hadn’t ordered. She’d known that this order would be given to Harrold, and she loved him like a grandfather. I suspected that Lille had a heart; it was just hidden under all that snark.