Murder At The Christmas Cookie Bake-Off
More intoxicating than a cup of holiday eggnog, Murder At The Christmas Cookie Bake-Off is a totally fun and festive holiday cozy topped with a frosty dash of murder! Superb story spinner, Darci Hannah brings us her newest release and second installment of her (quite fabulous) Beacon Bakeshop Mystery series.
Lindsey Bakewell walked away from her Wall Street career. In fact, she bought an old abandoned lighthouse on the Shores of Lake Michigan straight off the internet! Restoring the lighthouse and converting it into her new bakery business as well as her home, was a challenge. But now the bakery is on solid footing and Lindsey has become a respected and well-loved businesswoman.
Christmas is right around the corner and the whole area is gearing up for the holidays. This year the town’s Christmas Festival has a Christmas cookie theme. There’s even going to be a live Christmas cookie bake-off and the judge is going to be Chevy Chambers, a celebrity food critic with his own TV show.
But as the town gears up for what should be wholesome family fun, there’s some women participating in the bake-off who will stop at nothing to ace first place – including using their womanly wiles on Chevy Chambers! Toss in some cat fights and plenty of other holiday weirdness: A woman magically appears in Lindsey’s bakery – applying for a job and looking a whole lot like a Mrs. Claus. Then the bakery gets robbed by 3 conniving women – they didn’t want the cash – they boosted a huge plate of Lindsey’s specialty bake-off cookies!
When the big day arrives and the bake-off begins, someone gets slapped with a icing bag, sheets of fondant are flying and someone’s wife is dragged off the stage! Meanwhile, the cookie nappers are being chased around the audience and a body, colder than the North Pole, unexpectedly shows up! Now that’s some kind of bake-off: from wholesome to weird to downright deadly!
Yup – it’s murder in the first! And since Lindsey is one of the bake-off participants, she’s smack in the middle of it. She wonders what kind of killer strikes in the middle of a Christmas Festival and cookie bake-off? But before she can even come up with an answer, she realizes there are way too many suspects – and she’s one of them!
The murder itself in this cozy took a long time coming, but the wonderful down home Christmas feel, the mystery of the Christmas cookie nappers, a solid shot of Christmas cheer and original characters, made it so much fun that I forgot, at some point, that somebody was going to get whacked!
My Santa hat is off to Darci Hannah for bringing us happy happy happy seasonal tidings and a very creative cozy mystery with a twisty plot.
(Want more of Darci Hannah? Read my review under the books/mystery category for a review of her first book: Murder At The Beacon Bakeshop).
A copy of this book was provided by Kensington Publishing, a paid sponsor of Wonder Women Sixty. Publishers and authors can contact me at: ann@wonderwomensixty.com