Cherry Cheesecake Murder
By Joanne Fluke
A Hannah Swenson Mystery with recipes
Kensington
March 1, 2006
Hardcover
352 pages
$22.00
In Joanne Fluke's eighth Hannah Swenson mystery, Hannah is feeling the heat and it's not because of her oven. She hasn't declined the proposals of Mike, an acting sheriff of Winnetka County nor Norman, a popular dentist in town. So it seems everyone is after her to agree to one of the proposals. If that's not enough to make her forget her cookies are in the oven, Lake Eden becomes the location of a new film entitled, "Crisis in Cherrywood." Hannah's sister, Michelle, is hired on as a production assistant, her mother and Carrie are locating props for the movie and a number of locals are becoming extras. Even her niece, Tracey, has a role and the independent movie company is actually renting Main Street. And guess who has come to town? Noted bad-boy director, Dean Lawrence, who has wandering eyes and hands even though he's married.
Add another man to the mix and Hannah's life gets a whole lot more complicated. Ross is an old college friend with some new ideas and a great future. Now that he's been reunited with Hannah he seems to want to get closer to her, but his first priority as writer/producer is to get the project rolling.
Someone has altered the plot and it's not the writer. One man's dead and there's a lot of witnesses. Now who is going to find out who did it and why?
CHERRY CHEESECAKE MURDER delivers more than a few good recipes. Hannah is busy baking up her best selling cookies and dipping into this latest mystery. The characters are all fired up in figuring out what really happened. If you follow this series, your memory drifts into past episodes of Hannah's and her friends' lives. Then you wonder what's next for the town cookie maker. Only negative for me was the murder is introduced right in the beginning as current time and then skips back to two weeks earlier. It happens later after 200 pages.
four All-Nighter Cookies out of five
Denise Fleischer
gottawritenetwork.com
April 2, 2006
copyright DF and GWN
