The St. Valentine’s Day Cookie Massacre by Elisabeth Crabtree

The St. Valentine's Day Cookie Massacre by Elisabeth Crabtree
Series: Hatter's Cove Gazette Mystery #1
Published by the author on February 10, 2014
Source: Freebie
Genres: Cozy Mystery
Pages: 160
Format: eBook
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It’s Valentine’s Day in quiet, cozy Hatter’s Cove, Florida and food columnist, Kat Archer, has been assigned the event of the year, the grand opening of Miss Dolly’s Cookie Jar and Sweets Emporium.

What begins as a run of the mill, albeit tasty, assignment turns into something much more dangerous when one of the Cookie Jar’s employees is poisoned.

Now Kat is chasing the biggest story of her life, while trying to catch the eye of her handsome editor and avoid becoming the killer’s next victim.

If I’ve learned anything from cozy mysteries, it’s that holidays go perfect with dead bodies. So, instead of reading a romance for today, I went with The St. Valentine’s Day Cookie Massacre and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Kat has must moved back home from a stint in Miami and is working at a small local paper. The staff is small and while her heart is in investigative journalism, mostly she’s covering community events and doing the food critic column. She covers a local bakery opening where a fight breaks out. Later that evening, an anonymous caller asks her to meet him behind the bakery – he has information for her. When she shows up, she finds a dead body, a bakery employee who also happens to be one of the men who was in the fight earlier. Of course, she starts investigating. And ends up almost dead herself before she tracks down the killer(s).

So, The St. Valentine’s Day Cookie Massacre is a shortish read, but I really loved it. Kat is a great main character, smart, funny, sarcastic and her food critic comments are hilarious. I was laughing out loud in the first three pages. She’s tenacious, but it helps that she’s sorta friends with the new cop in town, also a transplant from Miami. There’s a touch of romantic interest between Kat and the owner/editor of the newspaper. He’s a good guy, I hope they get together without any stupid jealousy over Mr. Cop.

The clues were well-done and the motive made sense. The mystery takes several twists and turns and I was actually a little surprised at who dunnit.

It also made me wish I was somewhere warmer this Valentine’s Day. There were all walking around in short and sunglasses, meanwhile it’s cold and gray here in Ohio.