December 14, 2009
Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle is a great Christmas mystery. Warning: the mystery starts slow after the initial jolt of a back alley execution, but then after a few chapters, Holiday Grind really gets going again. I was drawn in by the mouth-watering descriptions of espresso drinks including candy cane and orange-spice yule lattes, and of baked goods like golden gingerbread-maple muffins and honey-glazed struffoli, but what hooked me on this mystery was its clever plot line, quirky characters, and fast action.
There was no stopping either the book or the heroine, single-mom barista Clare Cosi, as they went zooming along from the home base of the Village Blend coffee shop in the West Village of New York City and over to Staten Island, then in and out of the freezing Hudson River, up to the Upper West Side, across to the New York Public Library, and back down to the Village. The plot twists wildly out of any predictable mode and shoots forward with loopy turns and unexpected dead-ends and enough suspects to keep even the most demanding reader happily uncertain of whodunit until the very end.
Humor and suspense mixed in with sappy sex and old-fashioned cooking worked to make Holiday Grind a comfortable and fun mystery. The book also makes a solid stand as an enticing cookbook, with lovingly rendered descriptions of all kinds of delicious foods in the text and wonderful, ample, but difficult recipes for making your own delicious foods provided as a supplement at the end.
When my all-time Christmas favorite, The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, worked its way into the plot of Holiday Grind, I spouted a few tears and succumbed whole-heartedly to this sweet, lighthearted book. One New Year's Resolution? To drink up the other Coffeehouse Mysteries, with a souped-up latte by my side.
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