Blackberry Pie Murder
Joanne Fluke

Genre:
Mystery
Rating:

It's been a sleepy summer for the folks of Lake Eden, Minnesota. In fact, it's been a whole four months since anyone in the Swensen family has come across a dead body—a detail that just made the front page of the local paper. And that means Hannah Swensen can finally focus on her bakery. . .or can she?

Life is never really quiet for Hannah. After all, her mother's wedding is a little over a month away and guess who Delores put in charge of the planning? Yet just when Hannah believes her biggest challenge will be whether to use buttercream or fondant for the wedding cake, she accidentally hits a stranger with her cookie truck while driving down a winding country road in a raging thunderstorm. Hannah is wracked with guilt, and things get even worse when she's arrested. . .for murder! But an autopsy soon reveals the mystery man, his shirt covered in stains from blackberry pie, would have died even if Hannah hadn't hit him. Now, to clear her name, Hannah will have to follow a trail of pie crumbs to track down the identity of the deceased, find a baker who knows more about murder than how to roll out a perfect pie crust—and get herself to the church on time. . .

Review

For fans of:  Connie Archer, Laura Childs
 
Baker Hannah Swensen has a nasty habit of finding dead bodies, and as a result, she’s been a suspect in more murder investigations than she can count.  She’s never actually killed someone, though – until now.
 
When Hannah swerves to avoid a fallen tree and accidentally hits a pedestrian instead, she’s pretty sure things can’t get any worse. But when she’s then arrested and charged with vehicular homicide, she’s forced to face the fact that her happy, contented life in Lake Eden may be coming to an end.
 
The medical examiner is fairly certain the victim was mortally wounded before Hannah and her cookie van came along, but nobody seems to know who the man was, why he was injured, or what brought him to Lake Eden in the first place. There’s no arguing the accident hastened his demise, but if Hannah can use her sleuthing skills to fill in some of the blanks, maybe what she learns will help convince a jury she’s better off making bars than she is languishing behind them…
 
Blackberry Pie Murder is the seventeenth of Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen Mysteries, and while it’s not her weakest release to date, it’s not her strongest, either. Those familiar with Fluke’s writing know that the Hannah Swensen Mysteries tend to be pretty light fare; the children are precious, the adults are prudish, the dialogue is hokey, and the action and drama are usually kept to a minimum. Blackberry Pie Murder follows this pattern, but seeing as how the series protagonist hits and kills someone with her car at the start of the tale and is then charged with vehicular homicide, shouldn’t the tone of the book be a little darker to match? It’s adorable that Hannah’s cat has figured out how to operate a treadmill, and Hannah’s mom’s wedding-planning woes are really quite funny, but it’s a bit disturbing how unconcerned the core cast is regarding the fact that that Hannah committed a crime for which she could very easily do time, let alone how unaffected Hannah is by having ended someone’s life.

This leads me to my second complaint, namely that Blackberry Pie Murder offers the reader no closure. The story ends and Hannah has yet to stand trial. I understand Fluke wanted to close on a cliffhanger so that she could entice readers to pre-order the next installment, but not tying off your principal plotline? Unforgivable, if you ask me.

Thirdly, Blackberry Pie Murder isn’t really much of a mystery. The reader knows from the start how the guy died and who killed him because it happens on screen. Sure, Hannah digs around a bit trying to ferret out who the victim is and how he came to cross her path, but that doesn’t make for a terribly interesting puzzle – certainly not one complex enough to carry a book.  Add to this that I don’t for a moment buy that any police department in the world would arrest and charge a person with vehicular homicide for an accidental death that took place during a severe storm, and that Fluke telegraphs every single one of her big reveals, and you have a book that just feels phoned in.

Blackberry Pie Murder’s worth buying if you’re already a faithful and devoted reader of Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen Mysteries (it moves the series arc along, and like Fluke’s other books, it’s packed to the gills with tasty-sounding recipes for cookies, pies, and other assorted foodstuffs), but if you’re new to series or are only a casual Fluke fan, then you probably want to give it a pass.

Reviewed by Kat