Plum pudding murder

In a word, anodyne. The necessity of this series to shoehorn in so many recipes means that the characters suffer, and no one more than the main character.

It still bothers me that Hannah “loves” Mike and Norman and then gets jealous/mad when Mike talks about dating other women, but this is still a quick, fun mystery.

A good cozy mystery. To me, the whole point of a cozy mystery is the comfort from the same characters and their lives. The murder is always secondary.

This is my first experience with the Hannah Swensen mysteries by Joanne Fluke, and overall I enjoyed it. Because it is later in the series it was difficult at first to keep track of the side characters (which characters are there just for the one story, and which are recurring cast members), but overall I think it stood fairly well on its own. I'll have to go back to read more of the series to pick up on some of the book to book plot threads.

I particularly liked that the murder investigation wasn't the only mystery within the book, and I'm really looking forward to trying a number of the recipes.