FRIDAY: A Slice of Murder

I love a new cozy mystery and this one didn't disappoint!

Eleanor Swift runs a pizza joint called A Slice of Delight - something she and her late husband started together. While he has been gone for two years, she is still clinging to the wonderful life they had together, and the pizza business is one of the ways she stays connected to her husband's memory.

But all they built together is put in jeopardy when a late-night pizza delivery leaves Eleanor looking at a dead body and a murder charge. She and her sister Maddy will have to do some serious sleuthing to get Eleanor off the police chief's list of suspects. Includes recipes for pizza crust and sauce.

The sisters in this book were a breath of fresh air. While they bickered at moments, it wasn't the contentious relationship you see in a lot of books. They back each other up and have a great give-and-take relationship. There were plenty of suspects, so I was guessing at the murderer right up until the end, which I like in a mystery (although, I also love figuring it out before the end, too!). There's another book already coming out - Pepperoni Pizza Can Be Murder (A Pizza Lover's Mystery) which is going to be in hardcover on August 1. I enjoyed this one enough that I would buy the next in hardcover (although it is a little annoying because they don't look right together on my shelf that way!).

One side note about the author - on page 12 of A Slice, Maddy says she has been reading Earlene Fowler's quilting series and then the narration says that Maddy likes mysteries and has "devoured mysteries on candle making, card making, soap making, and more." The Earlene Fowler reference caught my attention because I just finished her latest book. Because of that, I paid more attention to that paragraph than I might have otherwise. I know from the flap that Chris Cavender is a pseudonym, and I wonder if the author is actually Tim Myers - who wrote a soap making series, a candle making series (among others), and a card making series (under the name Elizabeth Bright. Maybe this reference was a clue to careful readers and Myers' fans. Who knows? If you haven't tried one of Myers' series, check them out - they have great characters, settings and themes.

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