A Deadly Inside Scoop

March 16, 2020
This perky series launch from Collette (the Logan Dickerson mysteries) introduces Bronwyn “Win” Crewse, who has taken over Crewse Creamery, the ice cream parlor her family has owned for decades in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, after her aunt’s retirement. Win is excited to remodel the business and recreate her late grandmother’s innovative recipes. But when a snowstorm keeps all her potential customers at home on Win’s opening day, she decides to comfort herself by making a batch of ice cream with snow. On her trek to find pristine snow, Win trips over the body of Stephen Bayard, who years earlier plunged Win’s family into a legal nightmare. Bayard was killed with a lethal injection, and Win’s father, a surgeon at the local hospital, becomes a prime suspect. With the enthusiastic help of her best friend, Maisie Solomon, Win sets out to prove her father’s innocence. Readers should be prepared for lots of coincidences and jumping to conclusions, but a pair of plucky female sleuths, a close-knit family, and ice cream shop lore more than compensate. This is a tasty treat for cozy fans. Agent: Rachel Brooks, Bookends Literary.

March 15, 2020
The year's first snowfall reveals a corpse to a small-town entrepreneur. Making up most of the tiny African American population of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the Crewse family is a tight-knit bunch. That's why, even after earning her MBA, youngest daughter Bronwyn doesn't mind coming back to her hometown to resurrect Crewse Creamery, the ice cream shop her grandparents opened in 1965. In fact, when her PopPop hands over the keys to the shop on Christmas Day, Win's heart just about bursts with pride. Family loyalty also explains why Win, struggling to reestablish the fledgling business, takes the time to investigate the death of Stephen Bayard, whose body she trips over after sledding down to the river to collect clean snow to use in Grandma Kay's Snow Ice Cream recipe. Back in the day, Bayard wrought havoc in the Chagrin Falls business community, tricking Grandma Kay into signing the family business over to him before running away with bike shop owner Dan Clawson's wife. So Bayard's death makes Win's father, surgeon James Crewse, Detective Liam Beverly's prime suspect in a murder. It doesn't help Dr. Crewse's case when the coroner discovers that Bayard was catapulted into the next world by a hard-to-find anesthetic called succinylcholine. Putting a promising relationship with law professor Morrison Kaye on hold, Win focuses on two family-oriented goals: making Crewse Creamery a success and clearing her father's name. Ticks all the cozy boxes but sets none aflame.

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April 1, 2020
African American Bronwyn Crewse has just returned home to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, to reopen the ice-cream shop first established by her grandparents. After renovation delays, she is finally ready to open on a dreary, chilly October day?hardly the best weather for enticing customers to a shop selling only homemade ice cream. On her way to the shop, she encounters a man with a lost dog who engages her in conversation, hinting that he is friends with her grandparents, her parents, and several of the longtime shopkeepers. Later in the day, she discovers a body, which turns out to be that of the mysterious visitor. But he is not mysterious to her grandparents or those other shopkeepers, all of whom are sorry to see him back. Police determine that he was killed with a drug available to surgical personnel, making Bronwyn's father, a doctor, the prime suspect. Love for her father compels Bronwyn to listen her friend Maisie?who watches too much TV crime drama?and start sleuthing, to the annoyance of the detective and the worry of her grandfather. A promising debut with an appealing heroine.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)