Halloween Cupcake Murder

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Kensington Book Publishers is one of my favorite publishers.  It’s a family owned business, working on its third generation, and they publish a wide variety of books—including cozy mysteries.  For the last several years, they have been publishing holiday themed books with three novellas by three different authors.  I’ve found it’s a very good way to sample authors I don’t know and to be delighted by a new story from authors I do know. All the stories are standalones; no previous knowledge of a series is needed.

Halloween Cupcake Murder features Carlene O’Connor, Liz Ireland, and Carol J. Perry.  Since I love Perry’s Witch City Mysteries, picking this one up was a no-brainer. Her entry in the collection is “A Triple Layer Halloween Murder” and has Salem TV station manager and scryer Lee Barrett on the trail of a baker who disappears just before Halloween.  Aided by her beau, police detective Pete Mondello and her amazingly gifted cat O’Ryan, Lee tries to figure out just what has happened to the missing man.  The story was, as usual, well constructed, but the real appeal for me is the cast.  I like Lee a lot, in part because she actually does her job unlike some cozy heroines who can just take off at the drop of a hat; and I enjoy the peek behind the scenes at a tv station.  I also really like her aunt, Ibby, who is a reference librarian and I absolutely adore O’Ryan.  This story alone made the book worth buying for me.

I had been curious about Liz Ireland after reading reviews from Lesa Holstine’s blog, lesasbookcritiques.com.  Lesa is a retired librarian whose opinions I respect and when she said Liz Ireland’s Mrs. Claus books were a lot of fun, I took notice.  Yes, the heroine is that Mrs. Claus, married to the one and only Nicholas Claus and they live in Santaland. April was actually an innkeeper in Oregon before being swept off her feet by a man in a red suit, and now she has to adjust to elves, talking reindeer, and sentient snowmen.  I thought it sounded a bit daft, to be honest, but Lesa’s review made me want to take a look.  Having a novella seemed just the ticket.  After all, if I didn’t like it, there wasn’t too much to wade through.

Well, I found “Mrs. Claus and the Candy Corn Caper” was as delightful as promised.  In this adventure, Santaland is experiencing its first Halloween thanks to April. While the elves are trying to get the hang of candy corn, build a haunted ice castle, and put on a baking competition, elf Wink Jollyflake is found murdered in his employer’s bakery. It’s all a puzzle, including the murder weapon, but April Claus will figure it out!  And I am definitely reading more in this series.

“The Halloween Cupcake Murder” by Carlene O’Connor uses her Home to Ireland series as her basis.  Ex-New Yorker Tara Meehan has moved to Ireland and is opening an architectural salvage shop. Uncle Johnny sends her to Val Sharkey’s curiosity shop to pick up some Halloween decorations.  She finds some interesting items, but later Val turns up dead, his face smeared with a possibly poisoned cupcake.  Then someone turns up with a cupcake for Tara…. 

For me, this last one was the weakest story, even though I had read and liked the first book in the series.  The ending seemed rushed. I also suspect it suffered a bit by comparison, because I liked the other two so much.

There are other collections, including The Irish Milkshake Murder and The Christmas Cocoa Murders. Authors in the collections vary.

Mrs. Claus and the Nightmare Before New Year’s by Liz Ireland

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

April Claus is trying to stay calm, but when your husband is out making stops all over the world in an aging sleigh pulled by reindeer it’s a little hard.  The sleigh doesn’t even have seatbelts.  Although everyone tells her not to worry, that Santa always comes back, she’s still very tense.  She’s trying to immerse herself in the welcome back preparations, but then there’s a Situation.

Three humans have been found near Santaland, all injured from an apparent plane crash.  They can’t just be left to die, so they are transported to Christmastown where they’ll have to kept isolated and unaware of where they are.  There’s a complication, though:  one of the men has been stabbed—with a reindeer antler.

When the man dies, the ante is upped:  not only does April have to find a murderer, but she also has to keep the survivors convinced that they’re in Canada, that reindeer and snowmen don’t talk, that the elves are just somewhat short humans, and that all the Christmas stuff is just seasonal decorations and not a way of life.

Okay, so when I first heard about this series I thought it sounded way too cutesy for my taste.  Maybe even silly.  Then a reviewer whose opinion I respect gave it a very good review and I decided to give it a try.  I first read a novella set in this world, and found it to be delightful so I moved on to a full length book. 

I’ll admit that it does require a certain suspension of disbelief, what with talking reindeer, elves, snow monsters, and such, but then again so do books in which the local pastry chef solves murders and doles out recipes with equal aplomb.  Most of all, I found this book to be fun and imaginative.  Since April is still an outsider in some ways, having been a human innkeeper in Oregon before meeting Nick, she’s a good guide to the intricacies of Santaland living.  There’s a good bit of world-building and some wonderful characters.  Some of the reindeer were my favorites—oh, not the celebrity reindeer, but the off-beat ones like Wobbler and Quasar. The elves’ efforts to pretend to be Canadian were as humorous as they were earnest, and while I wouldn’t classify this as a fair play mystery, I had such fun reading it that I didn’t care.

While this may not be everyone’s cup of Christmas cheer, I found it was definitely mine. I’m looking forward to reading more in this series.