Cleveland

Vivien Chien: And Then There Were Bun

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Noodle Shop #13

Vivien Chien’s thirteenth book in the Noodle Shop Mystery series is And Then There Were Bun. Main character Lana Lee manages her family’s business, the Ho-Lee Noodlehouse Restaurant, in Cleveland’s Asian Village. While managing the noodle house pays the bills, Lana has a very serious knack for managing mysteries as well. Twelve times over now, Lana has helped the local detectives, including her boyfriend, Adam Trudeau. With her team of friends, there never seems to be any mystery they cannot unravel. read more

Vivien Chien: Crime Rangoon

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Noodle Shop #12

The heroine of the fun, bouncy series is Lana Lee, the owner (along with her family) of a restaurant in the Asia Village neighborhood of Cleveland. Lana is browsing in her favorite local bookstore one day when the owner mentions that her employee has quit without warning, leaving her shorthanded for an important upcoming event with a popular writer.  Lana, a big fan, happily offers to help, and the owner assigns her to act as her assistant (mainly monitoring the signing line and opening the books to the right page to be signed). read more

Kylie Logan: A Trail of Lies

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This is the third novel in Kylie Logan’s Jazz Ramsey series, and a contribution to the growing number of mystery novels featuring cadaver dogs or rescue dogs.  Books by Paula Munier, Margaret Mizushima, Diane Kelly, Spencer Quinn, Robert Crais and David Rosenfelt all celebrate dogs in differing degrees.  Logan’s is perhaps the least “doggy” series, though Jazz’s cadaver dog in training, Wally, not only deepens Jazz’s character, he advances the plot.

Jazz is an administrative assistant at a Catholic girl’s school in her hometown of Cleveland, and as a hobby, she’s training Wally to be a cadaver dog.  While he’s still learning, he’s come in handy in the first two books, and this one is no different.  Jazz is dating undercover officer Nick, who has asked her to keep an eye on his alcoholic mom, Kim.  When Jazz gets a call from Kim in the middle of the night insisting Nick is dead in her back yard – and that she killed him – Jazz rushes over. read more

Kylie Logan: The Scent of Murder

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Kylie Logan, author of numerous cozies in paperback original form, has hit the big time via a Minotaur hardcover with her latest book, The Scent of Murder.  Jazz is a school administrator who also works with cadaver dogs.  As the book opens, she’s taking her dog through his paces in an abandoned building, hoping he’ll find the tooth she hid on another floor.

As she steps back to let the dog work, the dog alerts in the “wrong” place – or is it?  When Jazz investigates, she find, so her horror, the body of a young woman, and worse, she’s a former student at the high school where Jazz works.  While Jazz had known her as a studious and creative young woman, the corpse is full goth – white makeup, black eyeshadow, black clothes, tats, piercings.  She’s puzzled about how this has happened in the few short years since the girl graduated from high school. read more