Beyond a Reasonable Stout (Sloan Krause Mystery, #3)

by Ellie Alexander

It’s the dead season in Leavenworth, Washington. The throngs of Oktoberfest crowds have headed home, and the charming Bavarian streets are quiet and calm - momentarily. Villagers use the reprieve to drink in the crisp fall mountain air and prepare for the upcoming winter light festival. Soon the town will be aglow with thousands of twinkling lights. Brewer Sloan Krause and her partner in crime Garrett Strong are using the slowdown to stock up on a new line of their signature craft beers at Nitro. The small brewery is alive with delicious scents and bubbling batches of brew.

Sloan loves the creativity and lowkey atmosphere at Nitro, which is soon threatened by the incumbent city councilmember Kristopher Cooper. Kristopher is running for re-election on a platform of making Leavenworth dry - a sure recipe for economic disaster. So when Kristopher turns up dead days before election night, Sloan quickly realises that his murder isn’t the work of a stranger. Every business owner in town had a motive to kill him, including none other than April Ablin, Leavenworth’s self-described ambassador of all things German. Sloan finds herself defending April and trying to sleuth out a killer amongst a group of familiar faces.

• ISBN10: 1250205751
• ISBN13: 9781250205759
• Publish Date: 1 November 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 11 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Minotaur Books,US
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Beyond a Reasonable Stout is the third book in the Sloan Krause cozy mystery series by Ellie Alexander. Released 1st Oct 2019 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 284 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

This series has been a fun and diverting read. There is a lot of beer and brewing information woven into the narrative and the ensemble cast of returning characters are mostly appealingly quirky and fun (except for April, her I want to smack). The small town politics and interactions provide a lot of color and atmosphere.

The mystery part of the story was a lot more linear and straightforward than the other books in the series. The denouement felt a little rushed to me and almost tacked on. There's also a multi-story plot arc concerning Sloan's biological parents and her background in the foster care system which had a different, more serious vibe and didn't mesh with the story as well for me. Despite those two details, the story as a whole is a fun and informative read.

The language is clean, the murder is off-scene, there's no sexual content, and this is a mostly light cozy in a consistently well written series. There is enough back story interwoven into this one, that it does work fine as a standalone. I have enjoyed the rest of the series, so it is probably worth picking up the earlier books.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.