Hannah Swensen, is cooking up carrot cake this time in her tenth cosy mystery. For a change it is a warm summer and everyone has gathered for a family reunion – not Hannah’s family but her assistant and partner in the bakery Lisa and her husband Herb. Family have come far and wide for this get together, with dancing, catching up and plenty of eating too.
As is the way in small towns, Hannah is called in along with regular characters to help with the organising and cooking of course. This comes in handy because you know it is not going to be a normal family reunion. When a long-lost uncle, Gus turns up after more than twenty years in the town where he disappeared mysteriously one night and left a lot of trouble behind, it seems he might be bringing a lot of trouble with him too when he turns up dead.
Hannah starts to wonder about the real reason he disappeared all them years ago and it seems that Mike the local police detective thinks Hannah might be better working with him on this investigation than not. It seems though it is only a one way communication.
This and like all previous Hannah Swensen stories is filled with recipes for you to try and actually once you flick past them, the book is probably cut down by about 50 pages or so. Nonetheless for escapism easy reading this or any of this series of books is just the right recipe.
I tend to pick these reads in the middle of the night, when I wake up and need something to go back to sleep with. They are cosy mysteries, with simply stories, probably saccharine sweet characters and all a bit too American schmaltzy for my liking. However they provide a diversion and are easy reads and sometimes that is all you need in a book.
Trouble is now I have read 10 of them, do I need to carry on and read more as a small part of me hopes that eventually she will decide which one of her male admirers she is going to actually choose!
Part of me wonders if perhaps I should just read them and record them but not actually review them. They are basically the same, following the same formula but then I should then apply that logic to reading Agatha Raisin books as well surely? One to ponder………
The Book Jotter 