Mint Chocolate Murder: An Ice Cream Shop Mystery

by Meri Allen

When Udderly Delightful Ice Cream shop manager Riley Rhodes is summoned to Penniman’s Moy Mull Castle, it’s the cherry on top of a successful summer season. The gothic pile built by an eccentric New England Gilded Age millionaire has been transformed into a premiere arts colony by Maud Monaco, a reclusive former supermodel. As part of Moy Mull’s Fall Arts Festival, Maud is throwing a fantasy ice cream social and hires Riley to whip up unique treats to celebrate the opening of an exhibit by Adam Blasco, a photographer as obnoxious as he is talented.

As Penniman fills up with Maud’s art-world friends arriving for the festival, gossip swirls around Blasco, who has a dark history of obsession with his models. Riley’s curiosity and instincts for sleuthing – she was a CIA librarian – are piqued, and she wonders at the hold the cold-hearted photographer has over the mistress of Moy Mull.

But when Adam is suddenly found dead behind the locked door of Moy Mull’s dungeon, Riley realises there’s more than one suspect who’d wanted put the malicious photographer on ice.

• ISBN10: 1250267080
• ISBN13: 9781250267085
• Publish Date: 15 August 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: St Martin's Press
• Imprint: St. Martin's Paperbacks
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: http://melia.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9781250267085

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Mint Chocolate Murder is the second Ice Cream Shop storefront cozy mystery by Meri Allen. Due out 26th July 2022 from Macmillan on their St. Martin's Press imprint, it's 304 pages and will be available in mass market paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

Small town shopfront cozies full of whimsy, easy to read, and with a puzzle to solve, are my favorites. This is the second book in a promising series with a self-contained mystery, fun eccentric local characters, a disagreeable murder victim who turns up dead and a stable full of potential suspects for former CIA librarian (and spy)-turned-ice-cream-shop-manager Riley Rhodes to untangle.

It's well written with light, non-intrusive (if not overly realistic) dialogue, and with a plot that moves along at a good clip. It's the second book in the series, but the necessary backstory is written in, and the mystery is self contained in this installment, so it's fine as a standalone. The language is clean (very light PG level with a single "damn" and nothing else to scandalize an elderly auntie).

This one also includes a tempting looking recipe for no-churn pumpkin spice ice cream.

Four stars. Definitely one for fans of shopfront cozies.

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