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).
Lana is so excited that she recruits her somewhat brash and slightly loud buddy Kimmy to help at the register, as she has her own shop in the market and is experienced at handling a crowd. As signing day dawns and Lana and Kimmy arrive at the mall, they are shocked to see the number of people waiting for the event. The bookstore owner is initially overwhelmed, but soon the team gets down to work, the talent arrives, and the signing begins.
It goes well and the writer patiently works her way through a long line despite feeling slightly faint in the middle of the event, but as everything wraps up, disaster strikes when the author is discovered dead in the mystery aisle. Lana, the one to find her, is deeply disturbed, especially as her latest book somehow precisely describes the manner of her own future death. In response, Lana, her roommate Megan, Kimmy, and Lana’s boyfriend, Adam Trudeau (who naturally happens to be a cop) band together to figure out exactly what happened.
To her shock, Adam invites Lana to be a part of the investigation, and she happily agrees, though it makes her quite nervous just to listen in on an interrogation. There seem to be plenty of suspects, but the women and Adam eliminate them one by one, leaving only a seemingly insolvable puzzle.
Of course it’s not, but it does take some clever sleuthing and deductive reasoning on Lana’s part to finally unmask the killer. These books are so much fun because the characters are interesting and pleasantly quirky, while remaining supportive of each other. Lana, far from a hardboiled investigator, is quite relatably freaked out when she discovers a dead body. Adam is simply a regular, decent guy and while he gets annoyed by Lana’s and her friend’s involvement at times, he also learns to appreciate it. Another standout is the fairly unusual setting of Cleveland, as well as the gentle portrayal of an appealingly supportive local Asian community. To top it off, Lana also has one of the cutest dogs in mystery fiction, Kikko the black pug.
Books like this one are the reason I read and enjoy cozies. The people are interesting and nice to each other, functioning in a recognizable contemporary environment, all animated by and wrapped in an engaging mystery. Although I can’t guarantee your appetite won’t be whetted by the alluringly described food, there’s nothing quite so delicious as a good cozy, and the recipe in this one is top notch. — Robin Agnew