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CARROT CAKE MURDER
by Joanne Fluke
Kensington, February 2008
288 pages
$22.00
ISBN: 0758210205


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Lake Eden, Minnesota is all a buzz these days. Marge Beeseman's big family is holding their family reunion this summer right in town and it seems like everyone is invited including Marge's friend Hannah Swenson, owner of The Cookie Jar bakery.

Hundreds of family members travel from far and wide to attend the festivities including Marge's brother, Gus. Gus left Lake Eden thirty years ago and no one knew if he was alive or not. In fact, Marge and her sister Patsy have no idea how Gus found out about the party since no one knew where he was in order to invite him. But all that doesn't matter because Gus is back in town and everyone is excited to see him. That is, almost everyone.

Hannah was sitting with Marge and Marge's family during the dinner the first night of the reunion but she wasn't paying much attention to the conversation. She was thinking about her cat, Moishe, who is very unhappy for some reason. He's destroying all of Hannah's pillows and running around the bathtub all night keeping Hannah and her neighbors awake.

But all her worrying about Moishe doesn't stop her from noticing that there was a lot of tension and angry words between Gus and the other men in the family. Hannah only finds out how much tension when later that night she discovers Gus dead, lying in the crumbs of the carrot cake that Hannah gave him as a snack to take back to the place he was staying.

Hannah is known not only for her fabulous cookies but for solving murders as well, so Marge and her family ask Hannah to find out who killed Gus. Surprisingly, local police chief, Mike Kingston, one of two of Hannah's boyfriends, also asks Hannah to help him solve the murder. Hannah is thrilled and rounds up her two sisters, Andrea and Michelle, and the three of them prepare to investigate Gus's death.

Hannah and her sisters soon find out that there are many suspects. When Gus left town as a young men he left many enemies including some women he dated, one of who is Hannah's own mother.

CARROT CAKE MURDER is the tenth in the Hannah Swenson series by Joanne Fluke. From the start I'll say that I enjoy these books, but if you're looking for a solid murder mystery steer clear of this series. Here the murders are nothing more than a way to meet all of the residents of Lake Eden and to read about Hannah's cookies and to get the recipes for them. But don't worry, the cookies sound delicious and they alone are worth the price of the book.

As for solving this mystery, Hannah and her sisters do lots of investigating and many of the residents go to Hannah to give her information because they don't want Mike, the police chief, to know that they are involved. Hannah briefly debates with herself wondering if she should tell Mike what she's learned and swiftly decides that she won't tell him anything since he isn't sharing information of his investigation with her.

I'm a lover of good murder mysteries, and the fact that so much information is being kept away from the police chief and the whole idea that the police asks Hannah to help solve the murder, irks me. But then I just remind myself that the murder is not important in this book. Cookies, friends, family, cats, boyfriends, and everyday life is what pushes this series along. The murder is just icing on the cake holding everything together.

CARROT CAKE MURDER is a great cozy for a weekend's read. The characters are very likable, the cookies and the recipes are wonderful, and after reading one or two in this series you'll be able to shrug away the fact that the solving of the murder would never hold up in a real court of law. But who cares? With Hannah and her cookies what could possibly be bad?

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, February 2008

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