Ice Cream Shop #3
As summer heats up this year, cozy fans should really consider staying cool by enjoying Fatal Fudge Swirl by Meri Allen. The Udderly Delicious ice-cream shop owned by Riley Roades is the place to be in Penniman, Connecticut, even as it celebrates Halloween. Perhaps the surge at the store is because when winter comes in, ice-cream shops go out, and no one wants to miss out on their last cone of the season. Riley isn’t upset about it, though, as she already has several plans to fill the time off. There is also a major event in town as formal child star Cooper Collins is filming a romantic comedy in town and his socialite mother Diantha is having an extravagant Halloween themed wedding at the local Inn on the Green.
Said wedding is to Riley’s friend Mary Anne Dumas’ ex-husband, Dominic Domiello, who has sported said ‘ex’ in his title for only a few months before announcing his and Diantha’s engagement. One can safely assume that he hadn’t waited until the divorce to have started this romance. The divorce had been hard enough on Mary Anne, but knowing that he had been sneaking around on her while they had still been married was an extra blow. Yet despite all that, Mary Anne decides to swallow her pride and cater their wedding, even going so far as to decorate the ice-cream cake that Riley creates.
Riley could tell that trouble was brewing from just watching her friend interact with Dominic, but she couldn’t have predicted how wrong things would actually go. Always ready to help, and free to do so with the end of ice-cream season upon them, Riley ends up getting roped into helping out at the Inn as a maid during the event. It’s because of this that she comes across Diantha’s body, and inevitably Mary Anne becomes the primary suspect.
While Riley intends to put her old CIA training to use to try and do some sleuthing of her own to exonerate her friend, she keeps finding things that do just the opposite. Nevertheless, she persists at tugging at every lose thread she finds, gathering every bit of information and any clue so that she can pass it along to the police. While not thrilled at the idea of her poking around, they also don’t discount her or what she finds.
While this is the third book in Meri Allen’s Ice Cream Shop Mystery series, the previous two books are not required to enjoy Fatal Fudge Swirl. Riley is facing her own personal crisis while helping Mary Anne, and the previous books could help to put that drama into clearer perspective for readers. However, Meri Allen gives us enough details on said scandal to pique a reader’s interest, so diving right into Fatal Fudge Swirl won’t hurt. My favorite bit of this book is actually a massive spoiler, so I will keep it to myself. However, I will just say that I really appreciated Meri Allen’s creativity in this particular mystery and I look forward to reading more. – Carla Schantz