That was fun! I like a good cosy mystery, having grown up with Agatha Christie, and being a fan of similarly styled Clara Benson, but I seldom read contemporary versions. There are so many of them, and they all seem to feature recipes and quilting and so much quirkiness that the murder seems to take a back seat. Not so here. Yes, there’s some quirkiness, and the heroine is opening a cafe, but it’s a barkery (for dogs, geddit?), there are no recipes or quilts, and the murder is very much the main event.
The premise: Maggie May Carver is giving up city life and moving in with her octogenarian grandfather in a small town in the mountains of Colorado. She’s opening a cafe with her best friend, Jamie (a girl), with Jamie running the part of the cafe for humans, while Maggie, aided by her dog Miss Fancypants, runs the other side of it for canine customers. There are a handful of other characters, but the author doesn’t beat us over the head with a thousand and one potential suspects (or a thousand and one potential stars for followup books). There are just enough to keep up with, including handsome all-grown-up-now cop Matt, the guy Maggie had a crush on years ago. So… we can’t see where this is going, no, not at all.
The murders are just wacky enough to be interesting without getting outlandish, and it’s geriatric grandpa who’s the chief suspect. Well, it was his gun, and his signed baseball bat that was used to do the deed… So then it’s down to Maggie to get grandpa off the hook. I liked that Maggie was very level-headed about this. There are no heroics, no breaking and entering at midnight, no outrageous amateur sleuthing. She very sensibly whistles up a lawyer for grandpa, and when she’s tempted to investigate something, she tells the cops and leaves them to take all the risks. Clever girl.
The solution is logical, and pretty obvious (because I guessed it), but no one expects Primer-level twistiness in a cosy. All the main characters are that perfect blend of interesting and slightly off-centre (real human beings, in other words), with the exception of Miss Fancypants (Fancy for short), who is a very real dog and steals every scene she’s in, for good measure. I really enjoyed this, and I hope the author continues with the series. Five stars.