From the New York Times bestselling author of Billionaire Blend comes an enchanting new entry in the “satisfyingly rich” Coffeehouse Mystery series.Includes wicked good recipes!
When coffeehouse manager turned amateur sleuth Clare Cosi roasts “magic” beans for a Fairy Tale Fall event, she brews up a vision that leads to a sleeping beauty in Central Park; a big, bad wolf of Wall Street; and an East Side enclave with storybook secrets…
Fairy tale fever has descended on New York City. Broadway fans are flocking to Red Riding Hood: The Musical; museums are exhibiting art inspired by the Brothers Grimm; and Clare Cosi and her merry band of baristas give their coffee truck a “Jack and the Beanstalk” makeover for a Central Park festival. Clare’s coffee hunter ex-husband contributes a bag of African beans with alleged magical properties. His octogenarian mother entertains customers with readings of the grinds, but Clare remains skeptical–until she receives a vision that helps her find a young model’s body in the park’s woods.
The police dismiss “sleeping beauty” as the victim of a drug overdose. Then Clare uncovers evidence that points to a list of suspects–from a New York Giant to quite a few wicked witches–and a cold case murder that reaches back to the Cold War. Now Clare is really in the woods with a dangerous predator on her heels and an investigation that leads from a secret Prince Charming Club right back to her own NYPD detective boyfriend. If she doesn’t solve this mystery, those magic beans predict an unhappy ending.
For fans of: Diane Mott Davidson
When Village Blend coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi and her staff agree to don costumes and peddle their wares at the Storybook Kingdom festival in Central Park, they have no idea they’re essentially signing on to participate in a real-life fairytale – one complete with fortune tellers, magic beans, wicked witches, and a big bad wolf.
Unfortunately for the Blend crew, their story also features a cop who’s convinced Clare’s charming prince of an ex-husband, Matteo Allegro, is responsible for turning one of the festival’s princesses into a sleeping beauty. Can Clare and company vanquish the real villain and save the day?
Once Upon a Grind is the fourteenth of Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mysteries, and it’s one of my favorite additions to the series to date. Coyle’s latest is a tightly plotted, beautifully written, compulsively readable tale that proceeds at the pace of a bullet train. The mystery is clever, the stakes are high, and Coyle gives Clare great motivation for getting involved in the investigation. Coyle’s character work is superb, and she uses interpersonal conflict to marvelous effect – not only employing it to develop character and create drama, but to forward plot, as well. There’s no shortage of action, tension, or danger, and if the way the story ends is any indication, the stage has been set for Coyle to take the series in a new and exciting direction.
The Coffeehouse Mysteries all have a very strong sense of place, and Once Upon a Grind is no exception. Coyle’s writing transports you to Manhattan – you experience the sights, sounds, and smells just as surely as if you were there, yourself. And in the Village Blend, Coyle’s created a warm and welcoming base of operations for her series; the scenes that take place there always feel like coming home.
The best fairytales manage to not only delight and enchant, but thrill, as well, and Coyle achieves that with Once Upon a Grind. The book’s theme is a lot of fun and Coyle commits to it completely, but while the whimsy, charm, and magic are all turned up to eleven, Coyle’s whodunit is quite dark. The end result is a reading experience that’s both satisfying and restorative, and for that, Coyle deserves no small measure of praise.
Reviewed by Kat
