Review - Chocolate Covered Murder

Title:  Chocolate Covered Murder

Author:  Leslie Meier 

Series:  Lucy Stone Mystery #18

Genre:  Cozy Mystery

Publisher:  Kensington Books

Format:  Kindle

No. of pages:  304

Published:  December 27, 2011

My Rating:  3 Stars

DESCRIPTION:

"Lucy Stone, mother of three, works as a reporter on her local paper in the small town of Tinker's Cove, Maine. She's asked to write an article about a new local business, Chanticleer's Chocolates. But, as is so often the case with Lucy, it turns out not to be your usual run-of-the mill assignment . . . 

A local fisherman drowns suspiciously and then Chanticleer's sultry store manager turns up dead and covered in chocolate. Is this the work of a bitter ex-wife? Or is a rival fudge shop, recently stripped of its status as the ""Best Candy on the Coast"", behind her demise? With Valentine's Day just around the corner, Lucy gets on the case.

Sweeter than sugar, this wonderfully fun and cozy mystery from New York Times bestseller Leslie Meier is a delight from start to finish.

Link to purchase the book

MY THOUGHTS:

Lucy Stone is the mother of four, and even though a couple of her children no longer live at homes, she is a very busy woman. Couple that with her job as a newspaper reporter, and there simply are not enough hours in a day. Lucy's boss Ted has given her a frustrating assignment. It is not the serious type of article Lucy prefers working on.  Finding people to answer questions is frustrating as usual for Lucy. 

Par for the course, things quickly change when two people turn up dead, one of them covered in chocolate. Lucy, the ever focused amateur sleuth, starts looking for answers of her own. In usual format, Lucy knows just who to talk to in order to get to the bottom of things.

I am loving this cozy mystery series, and with this being book 18, am nearing the end. I hope Leslie Meier keeps on writing these. There are currently 27 titles and the next one is Easter Bunny Murder.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

I started writing in the late ‘80s when I was attending graduate classes at Bridgewater State College. I wanted to become certified to teach high school English and one of the required courses was Writing and the Teaching of Writing. My professor suggested that one of the papers I wrote for that course was good enough to be published and I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories. I got $100 for the story and I’ve been writing ever since. The teaching, however, didn’t work out.

My books draw heavily on my experience as a mother of three and my work as a reporter for various weekly newspapers on Cape  . My heroine, Lucy Stone, is a reporter in the fictional town of Tinker’s Cove, Maine, where she lives in an old farmhouse (quite similar to mine on Cape Cod!) with her restoration carpenter husband Bill and four children. As the series has progressed the kids have grown older, roughly paralleling my own family. We seem to have reached a point beyond which Lucy cannot age–my editor seems to want her to remain forty-something forever, though I have to admit I personally am dying to write “Menopause is Murder!”

I usually write one Lucy Stone mystery every year and as you can tell, my editor likes me to feature the holidays in my books. Of course Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year and my newest mystery “Eggnog Murder,” is included in an anthology with two other Christmas novellas by Barbara Ross and Lee Hollis. I’ve long been a fan of the classic English country house mystery, and was a faithful watcher of “Downton Abbey,” so I couldn’t resist trying to write one. I think I succeeded rather well, if I do say so myself, with “British Manor Murder,” which came out in October, 2016.

My books are classified as “cozies” but a good friend insists they are really “comedies of manners” and I do enjoy expressing my view of contemporary American life.

Now that the kids are grown — we have five fabulous grandchildren — my husband and I are enjoying dividing our time between Braintree and Cape Cod, along with our cat, Sylvester.

Find Her:  Goodreads / Twitter / Web