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Hannah Swensen #1
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
Her gingersnaps are as tart as her comebacks...
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the first mouth-watering novel in the Hannah Swensen crime series from acclaimed author Joanne Fluke. Packed full of delicious recipes and perfect for fans of M. C. Beaton and Leslie Meier.
Hannah Swensen already has her hands full running Minnesota's most popular bakery. But when Ron LaSalle, the delivery man from the nearby Cozy Cow Dairy, is found murdered behind the bakery with Hannah's famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, life couldn't get more complicated.
Who would have the audacity - and motive - to kill the most punctual delivery man Hannah has ever had the pleasure of working with? This is one murder that's starting to leave a very bad taste in Hannah's mouth. And if she doesn't watch her back, her life could be burned to a crisp...
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the first mouth-watering novel in the Hannah Swensen crime series from acclaimed author Joanne Fluke. Packed full of delicious recipes and perfect for fans of M. C. Beaton and Leslie Meier.
Hannah Swensen already has her hands full running Minnesota's most popular bakery. But when Ron LaSalle, the delivery man from the nearby Cozy Cow Dairy, is found murdered behind the bakery with Hannah's famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, life couldn't get more complicated.
Who would have the audacity - and motive - to kill the most punctual delivery man Hannah has ever had the pleasure of working with? This is one murder that's starting to leave a very bad taste in Hannah's mouth. And if she doesn't watch her back, her life could be burned to a crisp...
436 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2000
About the author
Joanne Fluke
103 books7,898 followersLike Hannah Swensen, Joanne Fluke grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota where her neighbors were friendly, the winters were fierce, and the biggest scandal was the spotting of unidentified male undergarments on a young widow's clothesline. She insists that there really are 10,000 lakes and the mosquito is NOT the state bird.
While pursuing her writing career, Joanne has worked as: a public school teacher, a psychologist, a musician, a private detective's assistant, a corporate, legal, and pharmaceutical secretary, a short order cook, a florist's assistant, a caterer and party planner, a computer consultant on a now-defunct operating system, a production assistant on a TV quiz show, half of a screenwriting team with her husband, and a mother, wife, and homemaker.
She now lives in Southern California with her husband, her kids, his kids, their three dogs, one elderly tabby, and several noisy rats in the attic.
Series:
* Hannah Swensen
While pursuing her writing career, Joanne has worked as: a public school teacher, a psychologist, a musician, a private detective's assistant, a corporate, legal, and pharmaceutical secretary, a short order cook, a florist's assistant, a caterer and party planner, a computer consultant on a now-defunct operating system, a production assistant on a TV quiz show, half of a screenwriting team with her husband, and a mother, wife, and homemaker.
She now lives in Southern California with her husband, her kids, his kids, their three dogs, one elderly tabby, and several noisy rats in the attic.
Series:
* Hannah Swensen
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,269 reviews
May 25, 2023
The TL;DR version: This was one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
This was a stupid purchase – and a stupid thing to read, for that matter, but I did want something brainless in the middle of my Big Giant Fantasy Series. I got it. It is the first in the Hannah Swenson mystery series, which I didn’t know when I started it. I eventually caught on as the main character reacted to discovering her very first corpse. (She said something to the effect of not making a habit out of discovering bodies, and both my eyebrows went up, because as with all cozies that’s the backbone of the whole series … )
And now that I think of it, that, the fact that it took me so long to realize it was the first book, is relevant to this review. There should be more initial exposition in this *as* a first book, better introductions to the characters and the setting, etc. (I know, I know – if there had been floating chunks of infodump I would have complained about that. Life is tough. So is writing. Deal.) Late in the story there is a mention of how Hannah’s sister asked her to leave school and come home to help their mother cope after their father died … but that’s a kind of massive request to make, and a massive decision, and no real motivation or reaction given. Their mother is depicted as pretty much okay, apart from joining every club in town; in fact, Hannah avoids her as much as humanly possible, so what is Hannah's role here, apart from cookie baker? Did she resent being yanked away from her chosen course? How did the bakery come about? It is mentioned that it was the sister’s idea; why?
Don't know.
One thing that does pretty clearly indicate a first book is the level of writing. The stupidity level is high among the characters, and in the plot … and the other draw in a book like this, the cookie recipes scattered throughout, aren’t remotely original enough to make the book worth reading or buying as a cookbook. Some of Diane Mott Davidson's recipes have become staples for me. Here? Woohoo, ginger snaps and chocolate crinkles. I’ve been making extremely similar recipes since I was ten. And I don’t understand the logic of renaming what are basically chocolate crinkles from the Betty Crocker Cooky [sic] Book “Black-and-whites”, when Black-and-whites are usually another kind of cookie entirely.
/\ - Chocolate crinkle.
/\ - Black and white. Unless you're in this book, God help you.
Joanne Fluke falls prey to one of the things that irks me the most in bad writing: thesaurusitis. Instead of adhering to KISS, certain writers feel the need to keep a thesaurus open at their elbow to “prettify” their prose. Here, for nauseous example, are a couple of bits from the scene where Hannah gives her cat some ice cream (even the cats eat poorly in this town): rather than use the words “ice cream” again, it is called “the mound of icy white” and “this intriguing new foodstuff”. (New to the cat, that was. No “frozen confection”? How disapointing.) Should it bug me as much as it does when a writer feels impelled to make a lame stab at poetry when feeding a cat ice cream? Maybe not. But it really does. You’re not Lord Byron, love, nor is Lord Byron called for in this instance. Don’t.
The book’s plot runs thusly: Hannah Swenson owns and runs a cookie bakery in a small touristy town, and one morning in winter her milkman doesn’t show up to deliver as he always does – and she finds him shot dead in the alley behind her shop. Her brother-in-law is a cop, up for promotion, and the prevailing logic is that if he – with her help – can solve the murder, he’ll be all set. And he lets her.
Right there I already have a couple of issues, namely that this *is* a small town, and how on earth does the author expect me to believe that this woman survives solely on what she makes selling cookies and coffee? There is no cake in this shop, no bread, no sandwiches – just cookies, yet I’m supposed to swallow that the locals all flock in every day to buy dozens and dozens and dozens of cookies, and have her cater several events per month. (Well, as she ponders several times, some of her customers eat cookies for breakfast. I hope there’s a good gym and/or cardiologist or endocrinologist in town too. But maybe the town’s too small.) For one thing, in every other chapter Hannah is handing out a dozen free cookies here and a batch there; I don’t care if some of these people are family (and the local traffic cop), that would put a dent in one’s profits. For another thing, I don’t care if half that catering is prompted by her mother’s membership in all those clubs (and her brother-in-law’s position), why on earth would anyone want even a small event catered by someone who is going to provide only cookies, coffee, and tea? (“She had tea and coffee, both 'leaded' and 'unleaded,' and her best silver platters heaped high with cookies.”) And only a single type of cookie at that, based on what she talks about here: a book club meeting is provided with “Regency” ginger snaps and caffeinated beverages. (Don’t get me started on the character’s "whatever" attitude toward historical accuracy and how easy it was to pull one over on these stupid ladies… “She’d researched the period, but there were very few published recipes and none of them had sounded like cookies.” So - eh, go with gingersnaps. Close enough.) And yet she has enough money that she doesn’t have to worry about spending a moronic amount investigating the murder, while meanwhile lavishing expensive gifts on her assistant. (Because she makes enough to not only support herself but to employ an assistant.)
I know. I know. “Willing suspension of disbelief” is the main requirement for reading fiction, and I as a hardcore fantasy reader should be a very willing suspender. But it’s a two-way street. I am a very willing suspender, as long as the disbelief isn’t too heavy to be suspended without snapping the thread. In other words, if a writer creates something utterly unreal but maintains a level of logic in her worldbuilding, I’ll buy into it wholeheartedly. When Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is more believable than Hannah’s Cookie Jar, Ms. Fluke has a little problem.
You’ll notice I’m not even bothering to mention the little fact that this civilian is running about playing Nancy Drew, and her cop brother-in-law is not only aware of it, not only allowing it, but he’s happy about it and grateful to her? Yeah. See, that’s the lifeblood of the cozy mystery, the utterly ridiculous detection, so there’s just no point in dwelling on it.
I know. I know. I’m trying too hard to apply logic and sense to a fluffy cozy mystery. But I just don’t understand why anyone would set out to write a book – or a series of books – which purposely ignores all common sense. I find it a bit offensive.
So. Even dumber than the blatant disregard for laws regarding patient confidentiality - “Call every dentist in town. Did they see Ron yesterday morning?” HIPAA was enacted in 1996. No. Just no. Oh, and “All information regarding a patient’s visit is confidential.... … If you come in then, I’ll tell you all about it.” *facepalm* This place needs not only better cops, but better doctors. But wait - too small.
... Even dumber than a civilian climbing in dumpsters after evidence, scampering about chasing down suspects:
“Drive to Twin Pines to check out the bouncer” (that would be the possible murderer), and trying not to get herself shot instead of bringing every scrap of information she finds to her brother-in-law *the*cop* …
“You’re scaring me, Bill. Do you really think it could be that dangerous?”
“Of course it could. Ron was murdered in cold blood and the killer won’t hesitate to take you out if he thinks you’re on to something.”
So why do you keep letting her continue, Bill??
... Even dumber than the idea that Hannah hits a jackpot on a slot machine and doesn’t notice, wondering what all the noise is about (“Hannah stared at the flashing numbers with absolute amazement.”) …
...Even dumber than the description of a very swanky party attended by just about everyone in town – including Hannah’s barely-legal bakery assistant ("very swanky party" usually equals "small and exclusive guest list")
… Dumbest of all is:
“As Hannah opened her dress purse and stuck the card inside, she wished that she’d had cards made”
Seriously?
Truly?
Why would a writer make her main character this big an idiot?
She’s owned a business for at least several months, long enough to be well known locally and to be able to hire a full-time assistant. She has bought a truck and had it painted bright red with the business logo plastered all over it. She has had shopping bags made with the store’s logo. And she doesn’t … have … business cards? Even if every local for a twenty-mile radius knows her and her store well, why would she not want to have her phone number on a readily accessible card so that if one of these locals who already loves her cookies wants to, I don’t know, order something they don’t have to call directory assistance? And what about all those tourists flooding through town in the summer? How stupid do you have to be not to get business cards?
All right, obviously that's not really the very dumbest thing in the book. There are just so very many to choose from.
“…Gave a fleeting thought to the difference between the fronts of the shops and the backs. There were no decorative planters in the alley for shrubbery or flowers, no plate-glass windows for displays and signs.”
Captain Obvious is obvious.
"Hannah had done some mental arithmetic as she’d driven home, taking into account the money she’d spent investigating Ron’s murder for Bill. Even after she’d subtracted the cost of the makeup from Luanne, the dress from Claire, and the money they’d spent at Twin Pines, she’d still come out over a thousand dollars to the good."
- Basic addition and subtraction, there. But it sounds laborious for her – I pictured her counting on her fingers – which is why her later reminiscences about college struck me funny: “she read the classics and knew who Wittgenstein and Sartre were” … “In college, the ability to do an algebraic equation in her head wasn’t considered a personality defect, and no one thought less of her if she knew the atomic number of einsteinium.”
Really, Hannah? Please - tell me the atomic number of einsteinium. I'll wait.
“Of course, there had been a group of incredibly gorgeous, bubbleheaded girls who’d turned male heads, but most of them had either flunked out or left to get their MRS degrees.”
- Well, that’s not sexist at all. (A Mrs. degree – get it? Get it???)
“I’m just going to run a currycomb through my hair.” Norman chuckled at her reference to the tool that was used to groom horses.
- Mother of God, that’s some laborious humor. Typical example.
“It sounds like such a quaint little shop. I’ll have to make a point of dropping in soon.” [someone said.] Hannah bristled.
- But … it is a quaint little shop. That in fact should be kind of what you're going for. It’s not exactly Fortnum and Masons, after all.
As always, Betty was dressed in vertical stripes. Someone must have once told her that they were slenderizing and they might have been, for someone less bulky. Betty’s stripes were wide tonight, and they were dark green and burgundy. The colors were pretty, but that didn’t stop Betty from resembling the side of a circus tent.
Wow, I think I hate this author. She’d best weigh 98 pounds soaking wet to write crap like that. (And she's a little more than 98 pounds.) In a book in which the main character makes a living off selling cookies - and in which you're including recipes for your readers to bake - you’re going to rag on the overweight? Really?
Betty was what Hannah and her friends in high school had unkindly called “heavy-duty.” She weighed close to three hundred pounds and she wasn’t known for her grace on the dance floor.
*low growl*
“But I just can’t help feeling that something really bad is going to happen. Remember Charlie Manson?”
… What? I ... just ... huh?
… Hannah noticed that the red light was glowing on the coffeemaker. She reached out to shut it off and realized that the pot was dry, just inky sludge that once had been coffee in the bottom. “Max left the coffee on.”
- For over two days? And the place didn’t burn down - the carafe didn't even crack? Huh. I'd like to know what brand of coffemaker that is.
A plate of these should be in every psychiatrist’s office — two Chocolate-Covered Cherry Delights will lift anyone out of a depression.
- Misogyny, mocking the obese, and trivializing mental health issues – superb.
"I’m surprised she didn’t suggest suttee!”
Delores laughed. “You’re right, dear. But that’s illegal, even in India.”
- I’m surprised the author didn’t take a half a page to explain what suttee is. Shocked, actually. I mean, she explained what a currycomb is.
Lake Eden’s too small to have more than one murderer. … How could we have two killers in a town the size of Lake Eden?”
- Oh, that’s too funny. First: it’s also too small for a woman (AND a full-time assistant) to make a living selling only cookies, but I’ve said that already. Second … see the end of this rant.
“…spooned in instant tea…”
- What the hell is instant tea? You mean like powdered instant iced tea, only hot? Oh, ew. Ew. Ew.
Wait – I was wrong. None of the bits I listed earlier are the dumbest things in this book. This, by several miles, is. (Spoiler alert, if you care, but I won't tell you too much.) Intrepid Girl Detective Hannah goes to see yet another suspect, and isn't subtle about the reason for her visit. Said suspect leaves the room and comes back with a shawl over her arm – and the point is made that this is a little odd since it’s rather warm in the room. “Well, she’s got a gun then,” I said. A few minutes later Hannah is shocked (shocked, I say!) when the suspect points a gun at her.
Trying to stall, Hannah asks: “When did you get the gun? Or did you have it with you when I walked in the door?”
I would have shot her right then. And with any half-decent lawyer I’d walk – it was justifiable homicide, Yer Honor. The woman was too stupid to live. To recap, the suspect walked out of the room. And came back with her hand hidden in an unexplained shawl. Gosh, I wonder if she had the gun hidden under the couch? Wait - a hidden panel beside the fireplace! Or in her undies! That must be it.
All right, that was monumentally stupid, but this - - this is absolutely prize-winning:
“In one of the detective shows she’d watched, the main character had jammed his finger somewhere or other to keep the gun from firing.”
No, miss I-can-do-an-algebraic-equation-in-my-head – you're thinking of that episode of Bugs Bunny. Of several episodes of Bugs Bunny - or maybe Yosemite Sam. A CARTOON can stick his finger into the barrel of a gun to keep himself from being shot. I seem to remember Mythbusters covered it; I don’t recall exactly how that played out, but I’m PRETTY sure it wouldn’t work for, you know, an actual non-toon human. (ETA – See below…) (E-again-TA: See also http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...)
Wait – I was wrong again. None of that is the dumbest thing. Remember how I mentioned this is the first book in the series? Odds are pretty damned good this was planned as a series from the beginning, definitely a jump-on-the-cozy-mysteries-with-recipes bandwagon effort. So this line, as they say, took the cake:
“Finding two dead bodies was more than enough for one lifetime.”
The series is up to 17 books.
LOL.
Wait. That's not funny, it's sad.
*Edited to depressedly add: 24 books. Twenty. Four. Books. And a series of Hallmark movies. Words cannot express how appalled I am.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
From the TLC/MythBusters website:
Finding: BUSTED
Explanation: The MythBusters treaded [sic] into cartoon territory to work out whether Bugs Bunny could really make Elmer Fudd's shotgun backfire and explode by plugging his rabbity finger in the barrel.
To ensure no one was harmed in the process, Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara [RIP] rigged up a remote-controlled shotgun to test this animated ruse. They also created a ballistic gel mold of Grant's hands and body that had a density comparable to human tissue, to keep his digits intact.
With the plastic finger blocking the bullet's path, the gun fired and blew this myth to smithereens. The fake finger didn't stand a chance against the shotgun shell and exploded — along with the entire dummy arm.
On the second round, the MythBusters used a stiffer wax hand to plug the gun barrel, but it couldn't beckon a backfire either. If Bugs Bunny were real, Elmer Fudd would've slain that wily rabbit a long time ago.
ETA: I was sorely disappointed that there was no mention of this in the recent ... pardon me while I weep quietly for a few minutes at the state of the world ... Hallmark Channel tv movie based on this book. (Oh, the humanity.) I have more of a sense of self-preservation than to have watched the whole thing - but I did see this scene. It was bad - but at least Hannah didn't try to be Bugs Bunny.
This was a stupid purchase – and a stupid thing to read, for that matter, but I did want something brainless in the middle of my Big Giant Fantasy Series. I got it. It is the first in the Hannah Swenson mystery series, which I didn’t know when I started it. I eventually caught on as the main character reacted to discovering her very first corpse. (She said something to the effect of not making a habit out of discovering bodies, and both my eyebrows went up, because as with all cozies that’s the backbone of the whole series … )
And now that I think of it, that, the fact that it took me so long to realize it was the first book, is relevant to this review. There should be more initial exposition in this *as* a first book, better introductions to the characters and the setting, etc. (I know, I know – if there had been floating chunks of infodump I would have complained about that. Life is tough. So is writing. Deal.) Late in the story there is a mention of how Hannah’s sister asked her to leave school and come home to help their mother cope after their father died … but that’s a kind of massive request to make, and a massive decision, and no real motivation or reaction given. Their mother is depicted as pretty much okay, apart from joining every club in town; in fact, Hannah avoids her as much as humanly possible, so what is Hannah's role here, apart from cookie baker? Did she resent being yanked away from her chosen course? How did the bakery come about? It is mentioned that it was the sister’s idea; why?
Don't know.
One thing that does pretty clearly indicate a first book is the level of writing. The stupidity level is high among the characters, and in the plot … and the other draw in a book like this, the cookie recipes scattered throughout, aren’t remotely original enough to make the book worth reading or buying as a cookbook. Some of Diane Mott Davidson's recipes have become staples for me. Here? Woohoo, ginger snaps and chocolate crinkles. I’ve been making extremely similar recipes since I was ten. And I don’t understand the logic of renaming what are basically chocolate crinkles from the Betty Crocker Cooky [sic] Book “Black-and-whites”, when Black-and-whites are usually another kind of cookie entirely.
/\ - Chocolate crinkle.
/\ - Black and white. Unless you're in this book, God help you.
Joanne Fluke falls prey to one of the things that irks me the most in bad writing: thesaurusitis. Instead of adhering to KISS, certain writers feel the need to keep a thesaurus open at their elbow to “prettify” their prose. Here, for nauseous example, are a couple of bits from the scene where Hannah gives her cat some ice cream (even the cats eat poorly in this town): rather than use the words “ice cream” again, it is called “the mound of icy white” and “this intriguing new foodstuff”. (New to the cat, that was. No “frozen confection”? How disapointing.) Should it bug me as much as it does when a writer feels impelled to make a lame stab at poetry when feeding a cat ice cream? Maybe not. But it really does. You’re not Lord Byron, love, nor is Lord Byron called for in this instance. Don’t.
The book’s plot runs thusly: Hannah Swenson owns and runs a cookie bakery in a small touristy town, and one morning in winter her milkman doesn’t show up to deliver as he always does – and she finds him shot dead in the alley behind her shop. Her brother-in-law is a cop, up for promotion, and the prevailing logic is that if he – with her help – can solve the murder, he’ll be all set. And he lets her.
Right there I already have a couple of issues, namely that this *is* a small town, and how on earth does the author expect me to believe that this woman survives solely on what she makes selling cookies and coffee? There is no cake in this shop, no bread, no sandwiches – just cookies, yet I’m supposed to swallow that the locals all flock in every day to buy dozens and dozens and dozens of cookies, and have her cater several events per month. (Well, as she ponders several times, some of her customers eat cookies for breakfast. I hope there’s a good gym and/or cardiologist or endocrinologist in town too. But maybe the town’s too small.) For one thing, in every other chapter Hannah is handing out a dozen free cookies here and a batch there; I don’t care if some of these people are family (and the local traffic cop), that would put a dent in one’s profits. For another thing, I don’t care if half that catering is prompted by her mother’s membership in all those clubs (and her brother-in-law’s position), why on earth would anyone want even a small event catered by someone who is going to provide only cookies, coffee, and tea? (“She had tea and coffee, both 'leaded' and 'unleaded,' and her best silver platters heaped high with cookies.”) And only a single type of cookie at that, based on what she talks about here: a book club meeting is provided with “Regency” ginger snaps and caffeinated beverages. (Don’t get me started on the character’s "whatever" attitude toward historical accuracy and how easy it was to pull one over on these stupid ladies… “She’d researched the period, but there were very few published recipes and none of them had sounded like cookies.” So - eh, go with gingersnaps. Close enough.) And yet she has enough money that she doesn’t have to worry about spending a moronic amount investigating the murder, while meanwhile lavishing expensive gifts on her assistant. (Because she makes enough to not only support herself but to employ an assistant.)
I know. I know. “Willing suspension of disbelief” is the main requirement for reading fiction, and I as a hardcore fantasy reader should be a very willing suspender. But it’s a two-way street. I am a very willing suspender, as long as the disbelief isn’t too heavy to be suspended without snapping the thread. In other words, if a writer creates something utterly unreal but maintains a level of logic in her worldbuilding, I’ll buy into it wholeheartedly. When Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is more believable than Hannah’s Cookie Jar, Ms. Fluke has a little problem.
You’ll notice I’m not even bothering to mention the little fact that this civilian is running about playing Nancy Drew, and her cop brother-in-law is not only aware of it, not only allowing it, but he’s happy about it and grateful to her? Yeah. See, that’s the lifeblood of the cozy mystery, the utterly ridiculous detection, so there’s just no point in dwelling on it.
I know. I know. I’m trying too hard to apply logic and sense to a fluffy cozy mystery. But I just don’t understand why anyone would set out to write a book – or a series of books – which purposely ignores all common sense. I find it a bit offensive.
So. Even dumber than the blatant disregard for laws regarding patient confidentiality - “Call every dentist in town. Did they see Ron yesterday morning?” HIPAA was enacted in 1996. No. Just no. Oh, and “All information regarding a patient’s visit is confidential.... … If you come in then, I’ll tell you all about it.” *facepalm* This place needs not only better cops, but better doctors. But wait - too small.
... Even dumber than a civilian climbing in dumpsters after evidence, scampering about chasing down suspects:
“Drive to Twin Pines to check out the bouncer” (that would be the possible murderer), and trying not to get herself shot instead of bringing every scrap of information she finds to her brother-in-law *the*cop* …
“You’re scaring me, Bill. Do you really think it could be that dangerous?”
“Of course it could. Ron was murdered in cold blood and the killer won’t hesitate to take you out if he thinks you’re on to something.”
So why do you keep letting her continue, Bill??
... Even dumber than the idea that Hannah hits a jackpot on a slot machine and doesn’t notice, wondering what all the noise is about (“Hannah stared at the flashing numbers with absolute amazement.”) …
...Even dumber than the description of a very swanky party attended by just about everyone in town – including Hannah’s barely-legal bakery assistant ("very swanky party" usually equals "small and exclusive guest list")
… Dumbest of all is:
“As Hannah opened her dress purse and stuck the card inside, she wished that she’d had cards made”
Seriously?
Truly?
Why would a writer make her main character this big an idiot?
She’s owned a business for at least several months, long enough to be well known locally and to be able to hire a full-time assistant. She has bought a truck and had it painted bright red with the business logo plastered all over it. She has had shopping bags made with the store’s logo. And she doesn’t … have … business cards? Even if every local for a twenty-mile radius knows her and her store well, why would she not want to have her phone number on a readily accessible card so that if one of these locals who already loves her cookies wants to, I don’t know, order something they don’t have to call directory assistance? And what about all those tourists flooding through town in the summer? How stupid do you have to be not to get business cards?
All right, obviously that's not really the very dumbest thing in the book. There are just so very many to choose from.
“…Gave a fleeting thought to the difference between the fronts of the shops and the backs. There were no decorative planters in the alley for shrubbery or flowers, no plate-glass windows for displays and signs.”
Captain Obvious is obvious.
"Hannah had done some mental arithmetic as she’d driven home, taking into account the money she’d spent investigating Ron’s murder for Bill. Even after she’d subtracted the cost of the makeup from Luanne, the dress from Claire, and the money they’d spent at Twin Pines, she’d still come out over a thousand dollars to the good."
- Basic addition and subtraction, there. But it sounds laborious for her – I pictured her counting on her fingers – which is why her later reminiscences about college struck me funny: “she read the classics and knew who Wittgenstein and Sartre were” … “In college, the ability to do an algebraic equation in her head wasn’t considered a personality defect, and no one thought less of her if she knew the atomic number of einsteinium.”
Really, Hannah? Please - tell me the atomic number of einsteinium. I'll wait.
“Of course, there had been a group of incredibly gorgeous, bubbleheaded girls who’d turned male heads, but most of them had either flunked out or left to get their MRS degrees.”
- Well, that’s not sexist at all. (A Mrs. degree – get it? Get it???)
“I’m just going to run a currycomb through my hair.” Norman chuckled at her reference to the tool that was used to groom horses.
- Mother of God, that’s some laborious humor. Typical example.
“It sounds like such a quaint little shop. I’ll have to make a point of dropping in soon.” [someone said.] Hannah bristled.
- But … it is a quaint little shop. That in fact should be kind of what you're going for. It’s not exactly Fortnum and Masons, after all.
As always, Betty was dressed in vertical stripes. Someone must have once told her that they were slenderizing and they might have been, for someone less bulky. Betty’s stripes were wide tonight, and they were dark green and burgundy. The colors were pretty, but that didn’t stop Betty from resembling the side of a circus tent.
Wow, I think I hate this author. She’d best weigh 98 pounds soaking wet to write crap like that. (And she's a little more than 98 pounds.) In a book in which the main character makes a living off selling cookies - and in which you're including recipes for your readers to bake - you’re going to rag on the overweight? Really?
Betty was what Hannah and her friends in high school had unkindly called “heavy-duty.” She weighed close to three hundred pounds and she wasn’t known for her grace on the dance floor.
*low growl*
“But I just can’t help feeling that something really bad is going to happen. Remember Charlie Manson?”
… What? I ... just ... huh?
… Hannah noticed that the red light was glowing on the coffeemaker. She reached out to shut it off and realized that the pot was dry, just inky sludge that once had been coffee in the bottom. “Max left the coffee on.”
- For over two days? And the place didn’t burn down - the carafe didn't even crack? Huh. I'd like to know what brand of coffemaker that is.
A plate of these should be in every psychiatrist’s office — two Chocolate-Covered Cherry Delights will lift anyone out of a depression.
- Misogyny, mocking the obese, and trivializing mental health issues – superb.
"I’m surprised she didn’t suggest suttee!”
Delores laughed. “You’re right, dear. But that’s illegal, even in India.”
- I’m surprised the author didn’t take a half a page to explain what suttee is. Shocked, actually. I mean, she explained what a currycomb is.
Lake Eden’s too small to have more than one murderer. … How could we have two killers in a town the size of Lake Eden?”
- Oh, that’s too funny. First: it’s also too small for a woman (AND a full-time assistant) to make a living selling only cookies, but I’ve said that already. Second … see the end of this rant.
“…spooned in instant tea…”
- What the hell is instant tea? You mean like powdered instant iced tea, only hot? Oh, ew. Ew. Ew.
Wait – I was wrong. None of the bits I listed earlier are the dumbest things in this book. This, by several miles, is. (Spoiler alert, if you care, but I won't tell you too much.) Intrepid Girl Detective Hannah goes to see yet another suspect, and isn't subtle about the reason for her visit. Said suspect leaves the room and comes back with a shawl over her arm – and the point is made that this is a little odd since it’s rather warm in the room. “Well, she’s got a gun then,” I said. A few minutes later Hannah is shocked (shocked, I say!) when the suspect points a gun at her.
Trying to stall, Hannah asks: “When did you get the gun? Or did you have it with you when I walked in the door?”
I would have shot her right then. And with any half-decent lawyer I’d walk – it was justifiable homicide, Yer Honor. The woman was too stupid to live. To recap, the suspect walked out of the room. And came back with her hand hidden in an unexplained shawl. Gosh, I wonder if she had the gun hidden under the couch? Wait - a hidden panel beside the fireplace! Or in her undies! That must be it.
All right, that was monumentally stupid, but this - - this is absolutely prize-winning:
“In one of the detective shows she’d watched, the main character had jammed his finger somewhere or other to keep the gun from firing.”
No, miss I-can-do-an-algebraic-equation-in-my-head – you're thinking of that episode of Bugs Bunny. Of several episodes of Bugs Bunny - or maybe Yosemite Sam. A CARTOON can stick his finger into the barrel of a gun to keep himself from being shot. I seem to remember Mythbusters covered it; I don’t recall exactly how that played out, but I’m PRETTY sure it wouldn’t work for, you know, an actual non-toon human. (ETA – See below…) (E-again-TA: See also http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...)
Wait – I was wrong again. None of that is the dumbest thing. Remember how I mentioned this is the first book in the series? Odds are pretty damned good this was planned as a series from the beginning, definitely a jump-on-the-cozy-mysteries-with-recipes bandwagon effort. So this line, as they say, took the cake:
“Finding two dead bodies was more than enough for one lifetime.”
The series is up to 17 books.
LOL.
Wait. That's not funny, it's sad.
*Edited to depressedly add: 24 books. Twenty. Four. Books. And a series of Hallmark movies. Words cannot express how appalled I am.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
From the TLC/MythBusters website:
Finding: BUSTED
Explanation: The MythBusters treaded [sic] into cartoon territory to work out whether Bugs Bunny could really make Elmer Fudd's shotgun backfire and explode by plugging his rabbity finger in the barrel.
To ensure no one was harmed in the process, Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara [RIP] rigged up a remote-controlled shotgun to test this animated ruse. They also created a ballistic gel mold of Grant's hands and body that had a density comparable to human tissue, to keep his digits intact.
With the plastic finger blocking the bullet's path, the gun fired and blew this myth to smithereens. The fake finger didn't stand a chance against the shotgun shell and exploded — along with the entire dummy arm.
On the second round, the MythBusters used a stiffer wax hand to plug the gun barrel, but it couldn't beckon a backfire either. If Bugs Bunny were real, Elmer Fudd would've slain that wily rabbit a long time ago.
ETA: I was sorely disappointed that there was no mention of this in the recent ... pardon me while I weep quietly for a few minutes at the state of the world ... Hallmark Channel tv movie based on this book. (Oh, the humanity.) I have more of a sense of self-preservation than to have watched the whole thing - but I did see this scene. It was bad - but at least Hannah didn't try to be Bugs Bunny.
November 3, 2017
Fantastic new series... and now they have a TV series with Alison Sweeney. Nice! It was one of the first cozies I read with recipes and I had to test one or two out. :) More to come on this series... I'm anxious to finish all 20+ books!
October 27, 2019
Ok, so... I'm officially in love with cozy mysteries, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. :P
I heart this genre so much; it walks the tightrope between good old-fashioned, small town, hardboiled noir and straight up cutie patootie-ness.
It's a great break from all the really sad, serious stuff going on around the world and in books, and is a gentle reminder of better days gone by.
Think summertime, a warm breeze passes you by as you're sitting under a beautiful old oak tree reading a comforting book. You're in the yard of a light yellow cottage style home with white trim and pink flowers neatly planted around the outside.
This little slice of perfection is tucked away from the madness of the world; nothing can ruin the simplicity and joy of your experience.
And that's cozy mystery.
Anyhoo, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the first in a long-running series written by Joanne Fluke. It's about a woman named Hannah Swensen who owns a cookie shop called The Cookie Jar, and she lives in a tiny town called Lake Eden with her trusty cat Moishe.
All bets are off when a man she grew up with is found murdered directly behind her shop. Who did it? Why? Will they strike again? She sets off to help her brother-in-law crack the case. He's up for a promotion from deputy to detective if he's successful.
Overall, it was a cute read, thoroughly enjoyable, and provided a much needed respite from the stresses of life.
I heart this genre so much; it walks the tightrope between good old-fashioned, small town, hardboiled noir and straight up cutie patootie-ness.
It's a great break from all the really sad, serious stuff going on around the world and in books, and is a gentle reminder of better days gone by.
Think summertime, a warm breeze passes you by as you're sitting under a beautiful old oak tree reading a comforting book. You're in the yard of a light yellow cottage style home with white trim and pink flowers neatly planted around the outside.
This little slice of perfection is tucked away from the madness of the world; nothing can ruin the simplicity and joy of your experience.
And that's cozy mystery.
Anyhoo, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the first in a long-running series written by Joanne Fluke. It's about a woman named Hannah Swensen who owns a cookie shop called The Cookie Jar, and she lives in a tiny town called Lake Eden with her trusty cat Moishe.
All bets are off when a man she grew up with is found murdered directly behind her shop. Who did it? Why? Will they strike again? She sets off to help her brother-in-law crack the case. He's up for a promotion from deputy to detective if he's successful.
Overall, it was a cute read, thoroughly enjoyable, and provided a much needed respite from the stresses of life.
January 13, 2023
I enjoy these types of fluffy cozy mysteries. The Cookie Jar setting was fun and included lots of cookie recipes too.
Enjoyed the character of Hannah Swensen and her snooping ways. The small town setting of Lake Eden was perfect. Hannah's orange cat, Moishe added another cozy addition.
The mystery is light, but the characters made it fun and enjoyable for a little escape.
Recommend to those who enjoy cozy mysteries and follow the characters through the series. This is a long running series.
Enjoyed the character of Hannah Swensen and her snooping ways. The small town setting of Lake Eden was perfect. Hannah's orange cat, Moishe added another cozy addition.
The mystery is light, but the characters made it fun and enjoyable for a little escape.
Recommend to those who enjoy cozy mysteries and follow the characters through the series. This is a long running series.
July 2, 2018
I had been eyeing this book for a while, mostly because the cover amused me so. I finally picked it up when I was on one of my cosy mystery tears. Knowing it had been written in the 80s made the content a little less annoying. Unfortunately, the first book is the best of this sad lot.
However, having read all but the latest (Key Lime Pie Murder, which I am still debating whether or not to read) in the series, I have to say that the series is not that great. The latter books were written more recently and the author did a pretty good job throwing in those little details that let you know that yes, you are in the 21st Century now (for example, one of the characters carries around a laptop and cell phone). But beyond that, there is not much to recommend this series.
The main character is the bakery shop owner. She eats a lot of cookies and worries about how fat she is and just frets about her weight far too often in the books. (At one point she goes on a diet and after a couple of days people are telling her how much weight she's lost and how good she looks. Personally, if she can look so different in just two days of dieting, then she probably didn't need to lose any weight at all.)
There are two men with whom she is supposed to be involved, but why they want to be with her is not clear. There is very little character development and I had a hard time understanding why, in a supposedly small town where everyone knows that she likes to investigate crimes (if you can call it investigating), the "suspects" don't have a clue that she is "interviewing" them.
Bottom line - unless you are bored to tears or stuck in a snowstorm with nothing else to read, this series can be skipped.
However, having read all but the latest (Key Lime Pie Murder, which I am still debating whether or not to read) in the series, I have to say that the series is not that great. The latter books were written more recently and the author did a pretty good job throwing in those little details that let you know that yes, you are in the 21st Century now (for example, one of the characters carries around a laptop and cell phone). But beyond that, there is not much to recommend this series.
The main character is the bakery shop owner. She eats a lot of cookies and worries about how fat she is and just frets about her weight far too often in the books. (At one point she goes on a diet and after a couple of days people are telling her how much weight she's lost and how good she looks. Personally, if she can look so different in just two days of dieting, then she probably didn't need to lose any weight at all.)
There are two men with whom she is supposed to be involved, but why they want to be with her is not clear. There is very little character development and I had a hard time understanding why, in a supposedly small town where everyone knows that she likes to investigate crimes (if you can call it investigating), the "suspects" don't have a clue that she is "interviewing" them.
Bottom line - unless you are bored to tears or stuck in a snowstorm with nothing else to read, this series can be skipped.
October 18, 2018
Oh HAIL to the NO!!
Did we really stop being monkeys to evolve into reading, thinking beings to read this shit?
Seriously:
A monkey could have written a better story.
A monkey could have solved this mystery without Idiot #1 and Idiot #2.
A monkey police officer wouldn't have made his untrained family member solve the crime for him.
In other words, when it comes to this book, we might as well go back to armpit-scratching and poo-throwing because it is that braincell-stealing dumb.
(Yes, I admit I should have run for the hills when I saw the cover. There was obviously a Lifetime or Hallmark movie made of this crap. That should have been my trigger warning.)
June 22, 2007
Is it difficult reading? No. Are the characters the best characters I've ever read? No. But what this series does have going for it is that all the books are a fun, light read. You could probably start reading any of these books as your first and you would have no trouble understanding the characters or the plots (some would find this a plus while others would see it as a drawback, I'm sure).
Hannah Swensen, the main character, while not as pretty as her sister Andrea, or her mother, for that matter, gets by on her charming personality and her smarts. She owns a cookie shop. I love the fact that while she is not a cookie-cutter (sorry, had to do it) type of beauty, she is still pursued by two different men, and even solves crimes before the local police can pick up on most of the clues! If only real crimes were this simple to solve...but luckily Hannah lives in a small town in Minnesota, which certainly narrows the suspect list down, as everyone knows everyone else in the area.
For all the baked-good connoisseurs out there, you may also appreciate the fact that Joanne Fluke includes the recipes Hannah makes for her customers. I have yet to try them, but they all sound really tasty to me! Try visiting her website at www.murdershebaked.com for some summaries and recipes.
I like to read these books before bed, because each chapter is relatively short, so I can read as little or as much as I want, and it's always a tasty (and happy) ending!
Hannah Swensen, the main character, while not as pretty as her sister Andrea, or her mother, for that matter, gets by on her charming personality and her smarts. She owns a cookie shop. I love the fact that while she is not a cookie-cutter (sorry, had to do it) type of beauty, she is still pursued by two different men, and even solves crimes before the local police can pick up on most of the clues! If only real crimes were this simple to solve...but luckily Hannah lives in a small town in Minnesota, which certainly narrows the suspect list down, as everyone knows everyone else in the area.
For all the baked-good connoisseurs out there, you may also appreciate the fact that Joanne Fluke includes the recipes Hannah makes for her customers. I have yet to try them, but they all sound really tasty to me! Try visiting her website at www.murdershebaked.com for some summaries and recipes.
I like to read these books before bed, because each chapter is relatively short, so I can read as little or as much as I want, and it's always a tasty (and happy) ending!
January 5, 2023
Cookie-maker Hannah is juggling life as a single baker with an opinionated cat and a mother who is determined to set her up with someone in their small town in Minnesota. When her dairy delivery guy turns up dead, Hannah has to help her brother in law, who just made detective, look for clues and solve the case. I love this cozy mystery series for the great recipes and fun quirky characters. I think I gain weight every time I read about Hannah’s cookies 😊 but it’s all worth it. This one kept surprising me all the way to the end as Hannah and her sister worked to solve the mystery of the killer. One of my favorite cozy series! (And adorable cat scenes!)
September 15, 2009
I should not have read other reviews of this book, before I did so I was reading along with only a slight nagging annoyance that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I'm not finished yet, but I will only be skimming the last 100 pages in order to find out who done it, I definitely won't be wasting my time with the other books in this series. Don't get me wrong, I love a cozy mystery & read lots of 'em, but why does the main character (if she’s younger than 35) always fall into one of two types in this genre? She's either super hot with a hunky boyfriend or she's the stereotypical "old maid" (frumpy/not caring about her appearance and has one or more cats). Hannah falls into the latter category & it drove me crazy! I was afraid sometimes that she would start making out with Moshie!
Worse yet was how she seemed to be doing all the investigating AND interviewing of suspects! Now I know enough to take any give cozy mystery with a grain of salt, but this one was waaaaaay too unbelievable! What the heck is Bill (the cop) doing while Hannah is out solving this case?
Don't get me started on how the author details Hannah's EVERY move and the horrible dialogue where the characters use the name of the person they are speaking to 50 times per sentence!! No one talks like that!
Lastly. . .I just had a hard time believing she affords to make a living (especially afford a condo) when she owns a shop that only sells cookies & coffee. No small Midwestern town needs THAT many cookies & if they did, they’d all be 300 lbs.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. . .
Worse yet was how she seemed to be doing all the investigating AND interviewing of suspects! Now I know enough to take any give cozy mystery with a grain of salt, but this one was waaaaaay too unbelievable! What the heck is Bill (the cop) doing while Hannah is out solving this case?
Don't get me started on how the author details Hannah's EVERY move and the horrible dialogue where the characters use the name of the person they are speaking to 50 times per sentence!! No one talks like that!
Lastly. . .I just had a hard time believing she affords to make a living (especially afford a condo) when she owns a shop that only sells cookies & coffee. No small Midwestern town needs THAT many cookies & if they did, they’d all be 300 lbs.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. . .
April 16, 2019
"Solving crimes certainly wasn’t as easy as they made it seem in the movies."
Hannah runs a cookie shop in a small town, and her main sources of worry are her mother, who constantly tries to match her with any widowed/divorced man in town, and her younger sister, who takes advantage of her state of single-woman-in-her-late-twenties making her babysit her daughter on a daily basis. Never in her whole life she would imagine that one day, right after opening up her cute, small, cookie shop, she will find the body of one of her fellow citizens peeping from his truck. Being the sister-in-law of the town's cop she soon gets involved in the investigation... did she bite more than she could chew?
The start of one of the most famous cozy mystery series, this novel by Joanne Fluke is the proof that murder and desserts go together like milk and cookies, and that a small cozy hometown is often the main attraction for killers, maniacs and other horrors. Wasn't Jessica Fletcher's life enough of a warning? 😏😏
When you see a cute, cozy town with small antique shops and flowers at every window... RUN! You never know when the next guy with the chainsaw is going to be right behind you!!!
P.S. The main character in this one is a little... mm how can i say this in a polite way? She's a b*tch. Fatshaming? Really? I hope she gets better in the next books, otherwise i will stop cheering for her and cheer for the killer instead 🔪
Hannah runs a cookie shop in a small town, and her main sources of worry are her mother, who constantly tries to match her with any widowed/divorced man in town, and her younger sister, who takes advantage of her state of single-woman-in-her-late-twenties making her babysit her daughter on a daily basis. Never in her whole life she would imagine that one day, right after opening up her cute, small, cookie shop, she will find the body of one of her fellow citizens peeping from his truck. Being the sister-in-law of the town's cop she soon gets involved in the investigation... did she bite more than she could chew?
The start of one of the most famous cozy mystery series, this novel by Joanne Fluke is the proof that murder and desserts go together like milk and cookies, and that a small cozy hometown is often the main attraction for killers, maniacs and other horrors. Wasn't Jessica Fletcher's life enough of a warning? 😏😏
When you see a cute, cozy town with small antique shops and flowers at every window... RUN! You never know when the next guy with the chainsaw is going to be right behind you!!!
P.S. The main character in this one is a little... mm how can i say this in a polite way? She's a b*tch. Fatshaming? Really? I hope she gets better in the next books, otherwise i will stop cheering for her and cheer for the killer instead 🔪
October 17, 2018
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
2.5 Stars
You know how you know something isn’t good for you, but you’re still all like . . . .
Yeah. That’s pretty much this book. After all, it is the story of the local cookie shop owner who gets recruited by her brother-in-law (who just so happens to beBarney Fife a policeman) to help solve the first murder Eden Lake has ever had. I mean, I haven’t experienced something this ridiculous since . . . . . well, actually just about a week and a half ago . . . .
Anyway. If you’re willing and able to leave reality 100% at the door, Joanne Fluke might have the series for you. These light and cozies are working out great for my commute so I have a feeling I’ll gobble up whatever else the library has to offer . . . .
2.5 Stars
You know how you know something isn’t good for you, but you’re still all like . . . .
Yeah. That’s pretty much this book. After all, it is the story of the local cookie shop owner who gets recruited by her brother-in-law (who just so happens to be
Anyway. If you’re willing and able to leave reality 100% at the door, Joanne Fluke might have the series for you. These light and cozies are working out great for my commute so I have a feeling I’ll gobble up whatever else the library has to offer . . . .
July 8, 2020
I've read other books in Joanne Fluke's 'Hannah Swensen' series so it was interesting to backtrack and read 'book one' for the first time.
Hannah Swensen - a tall, attractive baker - leaves graduate school and returns home to Lake Eden, Minnesota for family reasons. Hannah decides to stay in town and opens 'The Cookie Jar' bakery and café. Hannah's mom and two sisters live in Lake Eden and often become involved in her amateur investigations.
This book features Hannah's mom Dolores - who owns an antique shop and repeatedly tries to set Hannah up with eligible men (much to Hannah's chagrin);
and Hannah's sister Andrea - a pretty fashionista, mother, and real estate agent who's married to Deputy Sheriff Bill Todd.
As the story opens Hannah and her assistant Lisa are at 'The Cookie Jar' early, baking cookies and preparing for the morning rush. Hannah is expecting a delivery from milkman Ron LaSalle, who's late for the first time ever. When Hannah hears that Ron's delivery van entered a nearby alley she thinks he broke down and goes to help. Instead of a broken van Hannah finds a broken body....Ron has been shot dead.
Hannah's cop brother-in-law Bill is about to be promoted to detective and asks Hannah to keep her eyes and ears open - in case clues about Ron's killer come her way. Of course Hannah jumps right in and takes over the entire inquiry, keeping Bill in the loop as needed. This is a pet peeve of mine with this series..that Hannah (and whatever family members she draws in) do almost all the investigating while the cops do who knows what. I know this premise is common in cozy mysteries but it still irks me.
Between making cookies and pursuing her inquiries Hannah buys a flattering little black dress and attends the annual gala thrown by Del and Judith Woodley - one of the richest families in town.
Soon afterward another dead body is discovered and Hannah learns that this second victim was a loan shark who threatened some prominent Lake Eden residents. Could the murders of the milkman and loan shark be connected? Hannah plans to find out.
In this book Hannah becomes acquainted with the two men who form part of her (seemingly eternal) romantic triangle. First Hannah meets Norman Rhodes, described as an older, balding dentist who's taking over his father's dental practice. Later Hannah meets Detective Mike Kingston, portrayed as a handsome, blue-eyed, blonde hunk who's just been hired by the Sheriff's Department. Both men take a shine to Hannah and by the end of the book she has two dates for the weekend. (Sounds good to me....LOL)
Hannah talks to persons of interest, collects clues, and solves the crimes - putting herself in considerable danger in the process. But Hannah is a clever, resourceful gal and things turn out okay (allowing the series to continue. LOL).
The characters in the story are generally interesting and well-drawn. It would be great to know someone like Hannah, who gives away bags of cookies wherever she goes. I also like Hannah's big orange cat Moishe, a smart fellow who watches TV, tells Hannah when he's hungry, and provides affection and comfort as needed. The book also has cookie recipes sprinkled throughout, which sound delicious.
I enjoyed this cozy mystery and would recommend it to fans of the genre.
You can follow my reviews at http://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com/
November 9, 2020
DNF at Page 380 because of these dumb excerpts:
"She sat down in her chair with the shawl on her lap and handed Hannah the tickets with her left hand. “If you’ll open the folder, you’ll see that Benton’s plane didn’t land until twelve-seventeen. I assume that this will clear him as a suspect?”
Hannah examined the tickets. “Yes, it will. I’m really sorry that I had to bring it up and I hope that I didn’t upset you too much. It was just that the circumstantial evidence against Benton seemed overwhelming.”
“Overwhelming?” Judith’s eyebrows shot up. “How can that be? A killer requires a motive.
What possible motive could Benton have for killing Max Turner?”
“Actually,” Hannah hesitated, choosing her words carefully, “it concerns the personal loan that your husband had with Max Turner.”
“What are you talking about, Hannah?”
Judith looked flustered, not at all like her usual poised self and Hannah wondered if she should backpedal. But Judith had been very forthcoming and she deserved the truth. “I’m sorry I have to tell you, Judith, but Del secured a personal loan from Max Turner. I just learned about it this afternoon. And I know that Del was having some problems making the payments. You can see how this all fits together, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can.” Judith’s voice was hard and Hannah assumed that she was embarrassed.
“You thought that Benton shot Max so that Del wouldn’t have to honor the loan. Is that right?”
“That’s it. I’m really sorry, Judith, but it did make sense. You’ve got to admit that.”
Judith dipped her head in a nod. “You’re right, Hannah. It did make sense. Does your brother-in-law know about the loan?”
“No. There’s no record of it and I can’t see any reason to tell him, now that Benton’s been cleared. And Del has an air-tight alibi for the time of Max’s murder. He was meeting with his night supervisors at DelRay and there’s no way he could have been in two places at once.
The only other person who would care about the loan is you, and . . .”
“Brava, Hannah.” Judith smiled an icy smile and pulled a gun from beneath the folds of her silk shawl. “It’s unfortunate that you put the pieces together, but now that you have, I can’t let you tell your brother-in-law.”
“You killed Max?” Hannah gulped. She’d never stared into the barrel of a gun before and it wasn’t an experience she’d care to repeat. And if the cold, calculating expression on Judith’s face was any indication, Hannah suspected that she might not get a chance to repeat anything ever again.
“You were asking too many questions, Hannah. And you were skirting much too close to the truth. I knew it was only a matter of time before you arrived at the accurate conclusion and conveyed it to your brother-in-law. I couldn’t let you do that, now could I?”
Judith was going to kill her. Hannah knew that with heart-sinking certainty. She also knew that she had to keep Judith talking, to buy herself some time until the reinforcements came.
But there weren’t any reinforcements, Hannah reminded herself. She hadn’t told Bill that she was going to see Judith and he didn’t know anything about Del’s loan with Max. To make matters worse, Bill wasn’t even a detective yet. He’d never figure it out in time!
“Nervous, dear?”
Judith’s voice was taunting and Hannah shuddered. The polite socialite had turned into a cold-blooded killer and she was a goner unless she could keep Judith talking. “Of course I’m nervous! When did you get the gun? Or did you have it with you when I walked in the door?”
“Do you honestly think that I’d carry a gun around in my own home?” Judith laughed lightly.
Of course you wouldn’t. Even a shoulder holster would ruin the lines of your dress, Hannah thought. And then she wondered how she could think flippant thoughts when Judith was about to kill her. Either she was much braver than she’d ever imagined, or she still expected the cavalry to ride in at the last minute.
Hannah’s mind spun at top speed, searching for questions that Judith might want to do. “When did you go to get the gun? I’m curious.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the way my mind works. You’re going to shoot me anyway. You might as well do me a favor and satisfy my curiosity first.”
“And why should I do any favors for you?”
“Because I brought you cookies,” Hannah answered. “They’re some of my best, Pecan Chews. You’re going to love them.”
Judith laughed. She seemed to think that Hannah’s comment was funny. Maybe it was, but it was difficult for Hannah to see the humor past the gun barrel right now.
“Come on, Judith,” Hannah tried again. “What harm can it do to tell me? You were smart to get the gun. I just want to know when you realized that you needed it.”
“I had the gun when I came back with the plane tickets. It was under my shawl.” "
"She sat down in her chair with the shawl on her lap and handed Hannah the tickets with her left hand. “If you’ll open the folder, you’ll see that Benton’s plane didn’t land until twelve-seventeen. I assume that this will clear him as a suspect?”
Hannah examined the tickets. “Yes, it will. I’m really sorry that I had to bring it up and I hope that I didn’t upset you too much. It was just that the circumstantial evidence against Benton seemed overwhelming.”
“Overwhelming?” Judith’s eyebrows shot up. “How can that be? A killer requires a motive.
What possible motive could Benton have for killing Max Turner?”
“Actually,” Hannah hesitated, choosing her words carefully, “it concerns the personal loan that your husband had with Max Turner.”
“What are you talking about, Hannah?”
Judith looked flustered, not at all like her usual poised self and Hannah wondered if she should backpedal. But Judith had been very forthcoming and she deserved the truth. “I’m sorry I have to tell you, Judith, but Del secured a personal loan from Max Turner. I just learned about it this afternoon. And I know that Del was having some problems making the payments. You can see how this all fits together, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can.” Judith’s voice was hard and Hannah assumed that she was embarrassed.
“You thought that Benton shot Max so that Del wouldn’t have to honor the loan. Is that right?”
“That’s it. I’m really sorry, Judith, but it did make sense. You’ve got to admit that.”
Judith dipped her head in a nod. “You’re right, Hannah. It did make sense. Does your brother-in-law know about the loan?”
“No. There’s no record of it and I can’t see any reason to tell him, now that Benton’s been cleared. And Del has an air-tight alibi for the time of Max’s murder. He was meeting with his night supervisors at DelRay and there’s no way he could have been in two places at once.
The only other person who would care about the loan is you, and . . .”
“Brava, Hannah.” Judith smiled an icy smile and pulled a gun from beneath the folds of her silk shawl. “It’s unfortunate that you put the pieces together, but now that you have, I can’t let you tell your brother-in-law.”
“You killed Max?” Hannah gulped. She’d never stared into the barrel of a gun before and it wasn’t an experience she’d care to repeat. And if the cold, calculating expression on Judith’s face was any indication, Hannah suspected that she might not get a chance to repeat anything ever again.
“You were asking too many questions, Hannah. And you were skirting much too close to the truth. I knew it was only a matter of time before you arrived at the accurate conclusion and conveyed it to your brother-in-law. I couldn’t let you do that, now could I?”
Judith was going to kill her. Hannah knew that with heart-sinking certainty. She also knew that she had to keep Judith talking, to buy herself some time until the reinforcements came.
But there weren’t any reinforcements, Hannah reminded herself. She hadn’t told Bill that she was going to see Judith and he didn’t know anything about Del’s loan with Max. To make matters worse, Bill wasn’t even a detective yet. He’d never figure it out in time!
“Nervous, dear?”
Judith’s voice was taunting and Hannah shuddered. The polite socialite had turned into a cold-blooded killer and she was a goner unless she could keep Judith talking. “Of course I’m nervous! When did you get the gun? Or did you have it with you when I walked in the door?”
“Do you honestly think that I’d carry a gun around in my own home?” Judith laughed lightly.
Of course you wouldn’t. Even a shoulder holster would ruin the lines of your dress, Hannah thought. And then she wondered how she could think flippant thoughts when Judith was about to kill her. Either she was much braver than she’d ever imagined, or she still expected the cavalry to ride in at the last minute.
Hannah’s mind spun at top speed, searching for questions that Judith might want to do. “When did you go to get the gun? I’m curious.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the way my mind works. You’re going to shoot me anyway. You might as well do me a favor and satisfy my curiosity first.”
“And why should I do any favors for you?”
“Because I brought you cookies,” Hannah answered. “They’re some of my best, Pecan Chews. You’re going to love them.”
Judith laughed. She seemed to think that Hannah’s comment was funny. Maybe it was, but it was difficult for Hannah to see the humor past the gun barrel right now.
“Come on, Judith,” Hannah tried again. “What harm can it do to tell me? You were smart to get the gun. I just want to know when you realized that you needed it.”
“I had the gun when I came back with the plane tickets. It was under my shawl.” "
June 4, 2019
2.5
Why did I decide to read Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder? A simple answer. As a book lover, I like to read the book before I watch the movie. This book was made into a movie and Alison Sweeney is the protagonist.
Hannah Swensen lives in a small town. She moved back home after her father passed away to help out. She doesn't have a great relationship with her mother (her mom is always trying to set her up with any unmarried guy). She has a better relationship with her sister, Andrea, her niece and her brother in law, Bill. Hannah doesn't have a man in her life but she does have a beloved cat, Moishe.
Hannah owns The Cookie Jar in Lake Eden, Minnesota. Her shop specializes in selling different type of cookies. Her cookies are the best in town and her business is always quite busy. One morning, as she's about to start her day, she finds the dead body of a man she used to know from high school. The town is shaken by the news of the murder.
Hannah's brother in law, Bill is a policeman and a promotion is in the works if he can solve this case. With the help of Hannah, Bill might be able to achieve it.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is my first Cozy Mystery but I'm not sure this one was the right one for me to start with. I had to place it in the unbelievable category. I had issues with Hannah doing all the work and Bill letting her do it. She followed no police procedure and her questions were too direct when she was approaching the suspects. Anyway, I didn't love it.
If you have any good recommendations about a Cozy Mystery or if this series gets better, please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments.
Cliffhanger: No
2.5/5 Fangs
MrsLeif's Two Fangs About It | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Why did I decide to read Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder? A simple answer. As a book lover, I like to read the book before I watch the movie. This book was made into a movie and Alison Sweeney is the protagonist.
Hannah Swensen lives in a small town. She moved back home after her father passed away to help out. She doesn't have a great relationship with her mother (her mom is always trying to set her up with any unmarried guy). She has a better relationship with her sister, Andrea, her niece and her brother in law, Bill. Hannah doesn't have a man in her life but she does have a beloved cat, Moishe.
Hannah owns The Cookie Jar in Lake Eden, Minnesota. Her shop specializes in selling different type of cookies. Her cookies are the best in town and her business is always quite busy. One morning, as she's about to start her day, she finds the dead body of a man she used to know from high school. The town is shaken by the news of the murder.
Hannah's brother in law, Bill is a policeman and a promotion is in the works if he can solve this case. With the help of Hannah, Bill might be able to achieve it.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is my first Cozy Mystery but I'm not sure this one was the right one for me to start with. I had to place it in the unbelievable category. I had issues with Hannah doing all the work and Bill letting her do it. She followed no police procedure and her questions were too direct when she was approaching the suspects. Anyway, I didn't love it.
If you have any good recommendations about a Cozy Mystery or if this series gets better, please don't hesitate to let me know in the comments.
Cliffhanger: No
2.5/5 Fangs
MrsLeif's Two Fangs About It | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
August 4, 2023
3.5
Una novela como yo digo para desconectar, de esas que lees cuando estas saturado para entretenerte y no buscarle cinco piernas al gato.
La historia está escrita de una manera sencilla, amena, con diálogos y que se deja leer, asique esta etiqueta de “cozy” le queda bien.
Esta novela es la primera de lo que será una larga serie, que en su versión original ya está, ahora solo hay que esperar a que la traduzcan.
Ambientada en un pequeño pueblo de Minnesota, tendremos a nuestra protagonista Hannah, encargada de la investigación del asesinato de Ron, ni mucho menos Hannah es policía, sino que se gana la vida vendiendo galletas.
No es una novela que tenga mil giros, simplemente iremos investigando al pueblo entero y descartando sospechosos, además de esta trama hay otra subtrama relacionada con la vida de la prota, que seguiremos viendo en próximas entregas.
Hay muchos personajes, la prota es la típica que cae bien a todo el mundo, asique lleva perfectamente el caso, con personajes secundarios que todos son muy entrañables.
El final, pues bueno, es cierto que queda bien cerrado, no me lo esperaba por ciertas cosas, pero queda hilado y bien explicado. Asique si quieres un libro para desconectar, del estilo de Raisin, este es tu libro, sin complicaciones.
Añado como dato curioso que en el libro hay recetas de diferentes galletas para quien le guste este tema poder prepararlas.
Una novela como yo digo para desconectar, de esas que lees cuando estas saturado para entretenerte y no buscarle cinco piernas al gato.
La historia está escrita de una manera sencilla, amena, con diálogos y que se deja leer, asique esta etiqueta de “cozy” le queda bien.
Esta novela es la primera de lo que será una larga serie, que en su versión original ya está, ahora solo hay que esperar a que la traduzcan.
Ambientada en un pequeño pueblo de Minnesota, tendremos a nuestra protagonista Hannah, encargada de la investigación del asesinato de Ron, ni mucho menos Hannah es policía, sino que se gana la vida vendiendo galletas.
No es una novela que tenga mil giros, simplemente iremos investigando al pueblo entero y descartando sospechosos, además de esta trama hay otra subtrama relacionada con la vida de la prota, que seguiremos viendo en próximas entregas.
Hay muchos personajes, la prota es la típica que cae bien a todo el mundo, asique lleva perfectamente el caso, con personajes secundarios que todos son muy entrañables.
El final, pues bueno, es cierto que queda bien cerrado, no me lo esperaba por ciertas cosas, pero queda hilado y bien explicado. Asique si quieres un libro para desconectar, del estilo de Raisin, este es tu libro, sin complicaciones.
Añado como dato curioso que en el libro hay recetas de diferentes galletas para quien le guste este tema poder prepararlas.
October 23, 2007
I am a sucker for the quick, easy, light-hearted mystery novels and I really enjoy Joanne Fluke. The characters are fun and the "whodunits" are clever enough. Not surprisingly many of the situations the heroine finds herself in are a bit unlikely. But it's not meant to double your IQ, just entertain and all of her books do well at that.
August 28, 2018
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the coziest of cozy murder mysteries. Hannah runs a bakery called The Cookie Jar, and when a murder rocks her small town of Lake Eden, she jumps in to help her policeman brother-in-law solve the murder. In between her often tactless questioning of suspects and digging around where she shouldn't, she bakes cookies and dishes them out to every person she meets.
The mystery itself is interesting enough, though the solution isn't clever so much as Hannah just badgers everyone in town with questions until they relent and tell her everything they know. Eventually, she arrives at the right answer simply because she's ruled out everyone else in town, or at least that's what it seems like.
It reminds me a lot of Nancy Drew books I read growing up, where the main character is never in any real danger even though she's nosing into everyone's business and making it quite obvious to any criminals what she's doing. It's all a bit hammed up, but still fun and cheerful, great for when I'm wanting a light, relaxing read.
The mystery itself is interesting enough, though the solution isn't clever so much as Hannah just badgers everyone in town with questions until they relent and tell her everything they know. Eventually, she arrives at the right answer simply because she's ruled out everyone else in town, or at least that's what it seems like.
It reminds me a lot of Nancy Drew books I read growing up, where the main character is never in any real danger even though she's nosing into everyone's business and making it quite obvious to any criminals what she's doing. It's all a bit hammed up, but still fun and cheerful, great for when I'm wanting a light, relaxing read.
February 4, 2016
I'm going to give this 4 stars because Hannah figured out who the murderer was and her brother in law was up for a promotion with the sheriff's office if he caught the killer. I am glad it all worked out but I felt like Hannah was doing all the work. She needs to be a cop. I did like the end, too and hope she ends up with the man I like for her. I will definitely read more of these books just because they are a nice, light murder mystery to read. The characters are believable and easy to like. I also love how Joanne added the recipes into the story and how they mix in with the plot. Good, fun book if you're looking for something that isn't all blood and gore. I was stumped until the end! Would recommend!
February 20, 2014
Another wannabe detective. Another piece of tripe. I don’t know what I was expecting when I borrowed this audiobook from the library. The synopsis should have said it all.
Hannah Swensen is the most popular baker in Lake Eden. Hannah bakes the best cookies in town, and everyone makes sure to tell her this throughout the whole book. Not like Hannah needs their compliments, because she thinks she’s the Cookie Queen as well. She even goes far as to complain about the caterer’s cookies at the biggest party in town. “These are dry, unlike mine which are awesome. There’s no flavor, unlike mine which are so freaking awesome. You should let me bake for you, BECAUSE MY COOKIES ARE FUCKING AWESOME!” We get it, your shit is the best. Why don’t you marry your damn cookies if you love them so much?
Anyhow, one day while at work, Hannah discovers the body of a deliveryman in the back of her bakery. To make matters worse it looks like he’s been murdered! The whole town is in a tizzy. Everyone in Lake Eden is a busybody who can’t keep their nose out of other people’s business, so of course news of the murder spreads quickly. Hannah’s brother-in-law is assigned to the case, and he enlists Hannah’s help. Hannah, being a snoop like everyone else, agrees and plays detective to figure out who the killer is.
I love when inexperienced people decide to do something dangerous that’s absolutely none of their business (Hear the sarcasm?) I also love when someone thinks that watching crime shows counts as investigative experience. I’m not joking. Because Hannah watches CSI, Criminal Minds, or whatever cop show that’s out these days she thinks she can solve the case.
Oh man.
Hannah, honey, you’re a baker. You should be baking, not dumpster-diving looking for clues, (which you don’t touch with your bare hands because that’s what CSI told you.) The last bit is true, but you see my point. Hannah is Lake Eden’s new Inspector Clouseau.
Aside from the entire book which pissed me off, what bothered me was Bill asking Hannah for help and making her do all the work. If he can solve the case than he gets a promotion, but he doesn’t do much to earn that promotion. The baker is the one who figures it all out. Goddamn dude you’re a cop. Do your job and keep your sister-in-law out of it!
The ending is as cliché as can be. The killer holds Hannah at gunpoint and for half an hour of the audiobook they explain every detail of the Who What Where and Hows in the murder. Yep, every villain just has to have their monologue about their master plan. Hannah gets away, the murderer is arrested, and Bill gets his undeserved promotion. Oh, and Hannah, who has been single most her life, gets asked out on a date by two men. Congratu-fuckin-lations, girl.
Hannah Swensen is the most popular baker in Lake Eden. Hannah bakes the best cookies in town, and everyone makes sure to tell her this throughout the whole book. Not like Hannah needs their compliments, because she thinks she’s the Cookie Queen as well. She even goes far as to complain about the caterer’s cookies at the biggest party in town. “These are dry, unlike mine which are awesome. There’s no flavor, unlike mine which are so freaking awesome. You should let me bake for you, BECAUSE MY COOKIES ARE FUCKING AWESOME!” We get it, your shit is the best. Why don’t you marry your damn cookies if you love them so much?
Anyhow, one day while at work, Hannah discovers the body of a deliveryman in the back of her bakery. To make matters worse it looks like he’s been murdered! The whole town is in a tizzy. Everyone in Lake Eden is a busybody who can’t keep their nose out of other people’s business, so of course news of the murder spreads quickly. Hannah’s brother-in-law is assigned to the case, and he enlists Hannah’s help. Hannah, being a snoop like everyone else, agrees and plays detective to figure out who the killer is.
I love when inexperienced people decide to do something dangerous that’s absolutely none of their business (Hear the sarcasm?) I also love when someone thinks that watching crime shows counts as investigative experience. I’m not joking. Because Hannah watches CSI, Criminal Minds, or whatever cop show that’s out these days she thinks she can solve the case.
Oh man.
Hannah, honey, you’re a baker. You should be baking, not dumpster-diving looking for clues, (which you don’t touch with your bare hands because that’s what CSI told you.) The last bit is true, but you see my point. Hannah is Lake Eden’s new Inspector Clouseau.
Aside from the entire book which pissed me off, what bothered me was Bill asking Hannah for help and making her do all the work. If he can solve the case than he gets a promotion, but he doesn’t do much to earn that promotion. The baker is the one who figures it all out. Goddamn dude you’re a cop. Do your job and keep your sister-in-law out of it!
The ending is as cliché as can be. The killer holds Hannah at gunpoint and for half an hour of the audiobook they explain every detail of the Who What Where and Hows in the murder. Yep, every villain just has to have their monologue about their master plan. Hannah gets away, the murderer is arrested, and Bill gets his undeserved promotion. Oh, and Hannah, who has been single most her life, gets asked out on a date by two men. Congratu-fuckin-lations, girl.
November 29, 2019
The dull adventures of a judgemental, small-minded bitch who outright states on page 1 that she thinks she’s better than most other women. Or “females” as she calls them. If Fluke was actively trying to alienate me as a reader, I don’t think she could’ve done better.
Here are some of my many problems with this book:
1.Probably worse than Twilight and nearly as bad as the Sookie Stackhouse series for giving me inexplicable amount of detail regarding the minutia of the protagonist’s life. I don’t need to know every single thing Hannah looks at and touches before she leaves the house, in chronological order. I don’t need to know how she’s planning to heat her car once it gets colder. I don’t need to know every single item of clothing she puts on and takes off as she enters and exits buildings. I don’t need step-by-step instructions on how she takes a shower, Shut up.
2. Hannah on her sister: “Andrea was a hobby wife and a hobby mother.” A hobby mother? Horrible woman-on-woman judgement of the perfectly valid lifestyle choice of having a job and a child. The exact same choice Andrea’s husband is making btw. No judgement given.
3. Andrea has a jacket with "politically correct fake fur”. That’s not what politically correct means.
4. "Andrea just didn’t have the necessary patience to deal with her bright four-year-old." Unlike Hannah. Who is perfect because she can maintain her patience for the few hours at a time she has to spend with someone else’s child, which she isn’t raising.
5. Hannah is involved in this murder because it happens directly in front of her shop. So she decides it’s her business to investigate it. I’m sure she’s bored baking biscuits all day, but murder investigation isn’t an appropriate leisure activity.
6. Poor Hannah had to drop out of university to care for her mother, (No idea why. Her mother seems fine to me) so she’s casually running a 2-person cookie-baking shop in a small town as a career/hobby. Not sure about the economics of this.
7. Someone’s out of town at a Tri-State Buttermakers’ Convention?
8. Apparently if Hannah helps Andrea’s husband Bill solve the murder than Bill will be promoted by the Sheriff, and since he’d be making more money Andrea would not need to work and would be out of a job? Does Andrea have no say at all in her career or life?
9. It was “the type of weather that a mother of a preschooler prayed for.” I guess the fathers of pre-schoolers have more important things to worry about.
10. Lipstick on a coffee cup as a clue. Try a bit harder please.
11. Hannah is upset that the search for clues might ruin her light beige “dress slacks and sweater set”. But don’t worry readers. The world’s dullest outfit is washable. Poor Hannah will have to do laundry tonight though. What a shame. I can’t believe the heights of banality this book has already reached.
12. “Modeling herself after a television detective was crazy unless she was dumb enough to believe that the prefix of every telephone number in the entire country was five-five-five.” Is that a joke? Because it’s not funny, and it also doesn’t make any sense.
13. Bills says Hannah “smelled like a panhandler”. That’s a US term for a beggar right? Seems a pretty judgemental and offensive thing to say.
14. So the authorities are leaving it to Hannah to investigate the lipstick because she is a woman, and thus knows more about cosmetics than the law (i.e. men who have never spoken to women or looked around them at the world, and don’t plan to do so). However she doesn’t know too much about make-up because she is a nice woman, not a vain, selfish woman like Andrea who wears make-up and thinks about herself and her looks. So that’s pretty much everyone insulted and patronised.
15. No, wait. Fluke forgot to call middle-aged, non-skinny women disgusting, and shame them for possibly having sex lives. But don’t worry. That’s the next paragraph. Along with some more shaming of women who aren’t modest enough and do sinful things like wear hairspray and eyelashes.
16. Hannah says that she’s not interested in men, and it would take “the combined efforts of Harrison Ford and Sean Connery to change my mind.” Which is a horrible image.
17. “the winningest coach Jordan High had ever had.” Winningest? That’s not a word. You’re not telling me it’s a word. No.
18. A man was in a room with a woman, drinking coffee. The woman is married to someone else. Conclusion, the man and woman are having an affair. Seems a jump to me?
19. Hannah finds out important information regarding the last person to see the murder victim alive. But she withholds their identity from investigators because she’s worried about town gossip. Stop obstructing an investigation, you control freak!
20.Shut up about your cat!
21. Hannah drives dangerously, and is witnessed by a local cop who is known for his harshness regarding driving laws. However she gets away with a patronising finger-wave from him because she’s a nice white lady who bakes him cookies. Isn’t police discrimination cute?
22. What the hell is the “Lake Eden Regency Romance Club”? And why is it just introduced with no explanation? Same goes for the “Dorcas Circle”?
23. Hannah doesn’t waste time on her appearance, because all women who do are shallow. But luckily she is naturally drop-dead gorgeous, with a “perfect” figure. That’s convenient for her.
24. Characters mouths regularly drop open when they’re mildly surprised or interested in something. Even though that has never happened in real life, and this is a book for adults not an R.L.Stine
25. Hannah & Andrea discover photographic evidence of a medical professional abusing his position to drug and sexually assault multiple women. They then destroy this evidence to avoid embarrassing anyone. What makes them think they have the right to make decisions like this? Disgusting.
26. The homeless man everyone is suspicious of is apparently called “Blaze”. Not sure why. Homeless people don’t have special code names. Very weird.
27. Hannah visits a casino for the first time and sits around judging its patrons and owners whilst reluctantly playing a slot machine. Then suddenly, from nowhere, she wins the jackpot. Which means she’s making a profit on her “sleuthing”. Which is nice for her, I’m sure.
28.“If anyone had heard her singing about how much she adored her “big strong puss,” she’d be locked up as a nutcase.” No comment.
29.“In college…there had been a group of incredibly gorgeous, bubbleheaded girls who’d turned male heads, but most of them had.. flunked out or left to get their MRS degrees.” Pretty girls are stupid. Cool. Also, had to look up what MRS degree means. Very depressing.
30. Apparently Hannah’s university tutor took sexual advantage of her and other students. There are no consequences for this. It’s just a lesson learnt for her.
31. Hannah forgets what her own notes mean, but then recalls in “a flash of brilliant insight”. Which is slightly overdramatising the common experience of “remembering what you thought yesterday”.
32. SHUT UP about the cat!
33. Hannah goes to a society party and picks up new business for her cookie shop, because professional caterers only have to look at her to know that she can bake.
34. Hannah’s main interview technique is to keep asking people the same question over and over again and getting the same answer, until suddenly her victim’s eyes widen and they realise that they’d completely forgotten something important, but Hannah’s persistence has somehow triggered their tiny mind to start working.
35. So much fat-shaming of some woman called Betty, who Hannah calls “heavy-duty.” and compares to a circus tent because her dress is striped.
36. The dentist guy for whom Hannah’s covering up sexual assaults says he’s happy to go for dinner with her, as “My mother’s on a health kick and she doesn’t cook anything except chicken and fish. If I don’t get some red meat soon, I’m going to lose every ounce of my fabulous muscles.” Why can’t he cook his own dinner, instead of getting his mummy to do it for him every night?
37. So much contamination and disruption of crime scenes. Some of it from sheer stupidity and arrogance, and some of it as part of a deliberate attempt to avoid the man she fancies suffering some minor embarrassment.
38. Andrea: “I learned how to quiver right after Mother bought me my first bra. It always works with the guys.” Why do you hate women, Joanne?
39. The one thing Hannah admires about her sister is that she can really organise a handbag well. Yes, admires. Yes, An organised handbag. There might be a character more tediously small-minded than Hannah somewhere in literature, but I can’t think of one. Except Sookie Stackhouse, obviously.
40. “when the news got out that she’d been the one to find Max’s body, it would be standing room only. Hannah sighed … if she were ever unlucky enough to find a third body, she’d probably have to buy the building next door and expand.” Boo hoo. Well Hannah, maybe if you stopped breaking into the houses of missing people you’d end up discovering fewer corpses?
41. “Lake Eden’s too small to have more than one murderer.” That’s not how murder works Bill. You’re the junior detective, or whatever your title is. You should know that.
42. Pretty sick of everyone in town trying to matchmake Hannah with every man they can think of. Why don’t any of these people have anything better to do?
43. Hannah has to be the stupidest person alive. She manages to personally arrange a meeting with the murderer, and proceeds to blithely inform them that they’re the only person left to suspect, whilst somehow not realising that they were responsible for the murders until they pull a gun on her.
Basically, the dreary adventures of a prim, self-satisfied little Mary-Sue who can only define herself in contrast to every other woman she meets, with whom she is in constant competition. Meanwhile she is constantly being congratulated by everybody in the town for being terribly clever, thoughtful and kind even though her every thought and action is predictable and mediocre.
The actual mystery is deathly dull. Some guy we don’t know dies a moment after he’s introduced and we’re supposed to care. Then some other nobody dies in pretty much identically dull circumstances. The book is twice as long as necessary to cover a very basic plot, and mainly consists of Hannah spending a lot of time eavesdropping on people and laughing at them, whilst very basic clues fall into her lap. Throughout she is consistently smug, complacent, and amazed by every banality with which Fluke punishes the reader.
Very bad.
Here are some of my many problems with this book:
1.Probably worse than Twilight and nearly as bad as the Sookie Stackhouse series for giving me inexplicable amount of detail regarding the minutia of the protagonist’s life. I don’t need to know every single thing Hannah looks at and touches before she leaves the house, in chronological order. I don’t need to know how she’s planning to heat her car once it gets colder. I don’t need to know every single item of clothing she puts on and takes off as she enters and exits buildings. I don’t need step-by-step instructions on how she takes a shower, Shut up.
2. Hannah on her sister: “Andrea was a hobby wife and a hobby mother.” A hobby mother? Horrible woman-on-woman judgement of the perfectly valid lifestyle choice of having a job and a child. The exact same choice Andrea’s husband is making btw. No judgement given.
3. Andrea has a jacket with "politically correct fake fur”. That’s not what politically correct means.
4. "Andrea just didn’t have the necessary patience to deal with her bright four-year-old." Unlike Hannah. Who is perfect because she can maintain her patience for the few hours at a time she has to spend with someone else’s child, which she isn’t raising.
5. Hannah is involved in this murder because it happens directly in front of her shop. So she decides it’s her business to investigate it. I’m sure she’s bored baking biscuits all day, but murder investigation isn’t an appropriate leisure activity.
6. Poor Hannah had to drop out of university to care for her mother, (No idea why. Her mother seems fine to me) so she’s casually running a 2-person cookie-baking shop in a small town as a career/hobby. Not sure about the economics of this.
7. Someone’s out of town at a Tri-State Buttermakers’ Convention?
8. Apparently if Hannah helps Andrea’s husband Bill solve the murder than Bill will be promoted by the Sheriff, and since he’d be making more money Andrea would not need to work and would be out of a job? Does Andrea have no say at all in her career or life?
9. It was “the type of weather that a mother of a preschooler prayed for.” I guess the fathers of pre-schoolers have more important things to worry about.
10. Lipstick on a coffee cup as a clue. Try a bit harder please.
11. Hannah is upset that the search for clues might ruin her light beige “dress slacks and sweater set”. But don’t worry readers. The world’s dullest outfit is washable. Poor Hannah will have to do laundry tonight though. What a shame. I can’t believe the heights of banality this book has already reached.
12. “Modeling herself after a television detective was crazy unless she was dumb enough to believe that the prefix of every telephone number in the entire country was five-five-five.” Is that a joke? Because it’s not funny, and it also doesn’t make any sense.
13. Bills says Hannah “smelled like a panhandler”. That’s a US term for a beggar right? Seems a pretty judgemental and offensive thing to say.
14. So the authorities are leaving it to Hannah to investigate the lipstick because she is a woman, and thus knows more about cosmetics than the law (i.e. men who have never spoken to women or looked around them at the world, and don’t plan to do so). However she doesn’t know too much about make-up because she is a nice woman, not a vain, selfish woman like Andrea who wears make-up and thinks about herself and her looks. So that’s pretty much everyone insulted and patronised.
15. No, wait. Fluke forgot to call middle-aged, non-skinny women disgusting, and shame them for possibly having sex lives. But don’t worry. That’s the next paragraph. Along with some more shaming of women who aren’t modest enough and do sinful things like wear hairspray and eyelashes.
16. Hannah says that she’s not interested in men, and it would take “the combined efforts of Harrison Ford and Sean Connery to change my mind.” Which is a horrible image.
17. “the winningest coach Jordan High had ever had.” Winningest? That’s not a word. You’re not telling me it’s a word. No.
18. A man was in a room with a woman, drinking coffee. The woman is married to someone else. Conclusion, the man and woman are having an affair. Seems a jump to me?
19. Hannah finds out important information regarding the last person to see the murder victim alive. But she withholds their identity from investigators because she’s worried about town gossip. Stop obstructing an investigation, you control freak!
20.Shut up about your cat!
21. Hannah drives dangerously, and is witnessed by a local cop who is known for his harshness regarding driving laws. However she gets away with a patronising finger-wave from him because she’s a nice white lady who bakes him cookies. Isn’t police discrimination cute?
22. What the hell is the “Lake Eden Regency Romance Club”? And why is it just introduced with no explanation? Same goes for the “Dorcas Circle”?
23. Hannah doesn’t waste time on her appearance, because all women who do are shallow. But luckily she is naturally drop-dead gorgeous, with a “perfect” figure. That’s convenient for her.
24. Characters mouths regularly drop open when they’re mildly surprised or interested in something. Even though that has never happened in real life, and this is a book for adults not an R.L.Stine
25. Hannah & Andrea discover photographic evidence of a medical professional abusing his position to drug and sexually assault multiple women. They then destroy this evidence to avoid embarrassing anyone. What makes them think they have the right to make decisions like this? Disgusting.
26. The homeless man everyone is suspicious of is apparently called “Blaze”. Not sure why. Homeless people don’t have special code names. Very weird.
27. Hannah visits a casino for the first time and sits around judging its patrons and owners whilst reluctantly playing a slot machine. Then suddenly, from nowhere, she wins the jackpot. Which means she’s making a profit on her “sleuthing”. Which is nice for her, I’m sure.
28.“If anyone had heard her singing about how much she adored her “big strong puss,” she’d be locked up as a nutcase.” No comment.
29.“In college…there had been a group of incredibly gorgeous, bubbleheaded girls who’d turned male heads, but most of them had.. flunked out or left to get their MRS degrees.” Pretty girls are stupid. Cool. Also, had to look up what MRS degree means. Very depressing.
30. Apparently Hannah’s university tutor took sexual advantage of her and other students. There are no consequences for this. It’s just a lesson learnt for her.
31. Hannah forgets what her own notes mean, but then recalls in “a flash of brilliant insight”. Which is slightly overdramatising the common experience of “remembering what you thought yesterday”.
32. SHUT UP about the cat!
33. Hannah goes to a society party and picks up new business for her cookie shop, because professional caterers only have to look at her to know that she can bake.
34. Hannah’s main interview technique is to keep asking people the same question over and over again and getting the same answer, until suddenly her victim’s eyes widen and they realise that they’d completely forgotten something important, but Hannah’s persistence has somehow triggered their tiny mind to start working.
35. So much fat-shaming of some woman called Betty, who Hannah calls “heavy-duty.” and compares to a circus tent because her dress is striped.
36. The dentist guy for whom Hannah’s covering up sexual assaults says he’s happy to go for dinner with her, as “My mother’s on a health kick and she doesn’t cook anything except chicken and fish. If I don’t get some red meat soon, I’m going to lose every ounce of my fabulous muscles.” Why can’t he cook his own dinner, instead of getting his mummy to do it for him every night?
37. So much contamination and disruption of crime scenes. Some of it from sheer stupidity and arrogance, and some of it as part of a deliberate attempt to avoid the man she fancies suffering some minor embarrassment.
38. Andrea: “I learned how to quiver right after Mother bought me my first bra. It always works with the guys.” Why do you hate women, Joanne?
39. The one thing Hannah admires about her sister is that she can really organise a handbag well. Yes, admires. Yes, An organised handbag. There might be a character more tediously small-minded than Hannah somewhere in literature, but I can’t think of one. Except Sookie Stackhouse, obviously.
40. “when the news got out that she’d been the one to find Max’s body, it would be standing room only. Hannah sighed … if she were ever unlucky enough to find a third body, she’d probably have to buy the building next door and expand.” Boo hoo. Well Hannah, maybe if you stopped breaking into the houses of missing people you’d end up discovering fewer corpses?
41. “Lake Eden’s too small to have more than one murderer.” That’s not how murder works Bill. You’re the junior detective, or whatever your title is. You should know that.
42. Pretty sick of everyone in town trying to matchmake Hannah with every man they can think of. Why don’t any of these people have anything better to do?
43. Hannah has to be the stupidest person alive. She manages to personally arrange a meeting with the murderer, and proceeds to blithely inform them that they’re the only person left to suspect, whilst somehow not realising that they were responsible for the murders until they pull a gun on her.
Basically, the dreary adventures of a prim, self-satisfied little Mary-Sue who can only define herself in contrast to every other woman she meets, with whom she is in constant competition. Meanwhile she is constantly being congratulated by everybody in the town for being terribly clever, thoughtful and kind even though her every thought and action is predictable and mediocre.
The actual mystery is deathly dull. Some guy we don’t know dies a moment after he’s introduced and we’re supposed to care. Then some other nobody dies in pretty much identically dull circumstances. The book is twice as long as necessary to cover a very basic plot, and mainly consists of Hannah spending a lot of time eavesdropping on people and laughing at them, whilst very basic clues fall into her lap. Throughout she is consistently smug, complacent, and amazed by every banality with which Fluke punishes the reader.
Very bad.
August 15, 2023
3,5⭐️
‘Unas galletas de muerte’ nos lleva hasta Lake Eden, típica ciudad pequeña donde todo el mundo se conoce. Hannah Swensen regresó tras la muerte de su padre para apoyar a su madre. Su vida dio un giro y dejó la universidad para poner su tienda de galletas que, por cierto, va viento en popa.
Su vida es bastante tranquila, siendo su mayor preocupación lograr que su madre deje de intentar emparejarla con todo el hombre casadero a su alrededor hasta que aparece asesinado en la puerta de su establecimiento uno de los vecinos. Hannah se mete en la investigación hasta la cocina… ¡no vayan a pensar que ella tuvo algo que ver!
Un cozy crime estupendo con una investigadora de andar por casa, pero que desde luego es mucho más apañada y tiene muchas más ganas de resolver que la policía local (que por cierto el encargado del caso es su cuñado, por lo que todo queda en casa)… Aunque no sé, si eres detective y tu pastelera de confianza resuelve crímenes mejor que tú, igual tienes que darle a una vuelta a cómo estás haciendo las cosas.
Una lectura fresca, sencilla y que a mí se me ha hecho muy amena. Ha sido justo lo que esperaba y me dio lo que buscaba, aportar luz, como complemento de otro libro que me estaba robando felicidad en cada página. Es cierto que hay algunos comentarios que no han envejecido especialmente bien en los más de 20 años que tiene la novela, pero bueno, salvando eso, no tengo queja. ¡Además, tendrás entre capítulos las recetas de las galletas que van saliendo en la trama!
*AVISO: no es una novela negra o policiaca al uso, no se parece a un thriller ni en una letra. Es un cozy crime: entretenido, con un misterio sin demasiada sangre y unos protagonistas a los que quieres seguir la pista.
Esta es la primera novela de la serie de Hannah Swensen que he visto que tiene ¡29 libros! No sé si quedará con vida alguien en Lake Eden… pero lo que tengo claro es que a mi me encantaría ir leyéndolos poco a poco si los traducen.
‘Unas galletas de muerte’ nos lleva hasta Lake Eden, típica ciudad pequeña donde todo el mundo se conoce. Hannah Swensen regresó tras la muerte de su padre para apoyar a su madre. Su vida dio un giro y dejó la universidad para poner su tienda de galletas que, por cierto, va viento en popa.
Su vida es bastante tranquila, siendo su mayor preocupación lograr que su madre deje de intentar emparejarla con todo el hombre casadero a su alrededor hasta que aparece asesinado en la puerta de su establecimiento uno de los vecinos. Hannah se mete en la investigación hasta la cocina… ¡no vayan a pensar que ella tuvo algo que ver!
Un cozy crime estupendo con una investigadora de andar por casa, pero que desde luego es mucho más apañada y tiene muchas más ganas de resolver que la policía local (que por cierto el encargado del caso es su cuñado, por lo que todo queda en casa)… Aunque no sé, si eres detective y tu pastelera de confianza resuelve crímenes mejor que tú, igual tienes que darle a una vuelta a cómo estás haciendo las cosas.
Una lectura fresca, sencilla y que a mí se me ha hecho muy amena. Ha sido justo lo que esperaba y me dio lo que buscaba, aportar luz, como complemento de otro libro que me estaba robando felicidad en cada página. Es cierto que hay algunos comentarios que no han envejecido especialmente bien en los más de 20 años que tiene la novela, pero bueno, salvando eso, no tengo queja. ¡Además, tendrás entre capítulos las recetas de las galletas que van saliendo en la trama!
*AVISO: no es una novela negra o policiaca al uso, no se parece a un thriller ni en una letra. Es un cozy crime: entretenido, con un misterio sin demasiada sangre y unos protagonistas a los que quieres seguir la pista.
Esta es la primera novela de la serie de Hannah Swensen que he visto que tiene ¡29 libros! No sé si quedará con vida alguien en Lake Eden… pero lo que tengo claro es que a mi me encantaría ir leyéndolos poco a poco si los traducen.
January 24, 2019
Only my legendary stubbornness got me through this book. I should have quit while I was ahead.
The book felt super disjointed. Hannah bemoans being the 'ugly sister,' hints at some brains (just shy of her doctorate, unless I misunderstood?), and hands out free cookies like she hopes to give the entire down diabetes.
Heck, the entire town might already have diabetes the way they flock to her cookie shop.
Anyway, so a murder happens and Hannah's idiotic brother-in-law convinces her to help him solve the mystery so he can take all the credit for it. She goes ahead and gets herself in a series of stupid situations and he doesn't blink an eye. She drags her sister into one of the said stupid situations and he freaks out.
So there you go. Personally, I think no one can be that stupid and he's just trying to save the town from a sugary death by offing his sister-in-law. Smart man.
Anyway, she goes about repeatedly repeating repetitiously a bunch of boring character analyses and chasing down dead end leads. She solves the mystery almost by accident. By this point, the astute reader already knows who did it so...snore. A boring dentist enters the picture and behaves like the boring dentist he is. A hot detective shows up and is...hot...so....that's about all there is to him. I see maybe a love triangle develops in later books but as the dentist's name is something like Norman I think we all know how this is going.
I suppose the only thing that makes the book somewhat interesting is the interspersed cookie recipes, but I do not bake and I don't read cookbooks so...nope. Not helping.
Overall, a disappointment. I had higher hopes for a book that consistently ranks high on cozy mystery lists.
The book felt super disjointed. Hannah bemoans being the 'ugly sister,' hints at some brains (just shy of her doctorate, unless I misunderstood?), and hands out free cookies like she hopes to give the entire down diabetes.
Heck, the entire town might already have diabetes the way they flock to her cookie shop.
Anyway, so a murder happens and Hannah's idiotic brother-in-law convinces her to help him solve the mystery so he can take all the credit for it. She goes ahead and gets herself in a series of stupid situations and he doesn't blink an eye. She drags her sister into one of the said stupid situations and he freaks out.
So there you go. Personally, I think no one can be that stupid and he's just trying to save the town from a sugary death by offing his sister-in-law. Smart man.
Anyway, she goes about repeatedly repeating repetitiously a bunch of boring character analyses and chasing down dead end leads. She solves the mystery almost by accident. By this point, the astute reader already knows who did it so...snore. A boring dentist enters the picture and behaves like the boring dentist he is. A hot detective shows up and is...hot...so....that's about all there is to him. I see maybe a love triangle develops in later books but as the dentist's name is something like Norman I think we all know how this is going.
I suppose the only thing that makes the book somewhat interesting is the interspersed cookie recipes, but I do not bake and I don't read cookbooks so...nope. Not helping.
Overall, a disappointment. I had higher hopes for a book that consistently ranks high on cozy mystery lists.
March 8, 2018
3.5 stars
June 20, 2022
This is a cozy mystery, and this is the first book in the Hannah Swensen series. I think it is just ok. It is not bad, but it is not great.
May 27, 2019
Hannah Swensen is a busy woman who is running Lake Eden, a popular bakery in Minnesota. When she is not creating culinary delights, her mother is trying to fix her up. Hannah isn't ready to settle down, and even if she is, she definitely does not want her mother's help. Hannah is devastated to discover a local delivery man dead, so she is determined to find the killer.
It is not as simple as creating delicious new recipes. No, every time Hannah thinks she has a bead on the murderer, yet another suspect pops up. Will she be able to use her deductive reasoning skills to identify the killer, but be smart enough not to be his next victim
If you enjoy reading cozy mysteries as much as I do, and will like the benefit of yummy recipes along the way, by all means grab a copy of this book.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the first book in the Hannah Swensen series. I look forward to trying to read a book a month for as long as it takes. With twenty-four books in the series to-date, and the twenty-fifth coming in February, 2020, I have quite a bit to look forward to
It is not as simple as creating delicious new recipes. No, every time Hannah thinks she has a bead on the murderer, yet another suspect pops up. Will she be able to use her deductive reasoning skills to identify the killer, but be smart enough not to be his next victim
If you enjoy reading cozy mysteries as much as I do, and will like the benefit of yummy recipes along the way, by all means grab a copy of this book.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is the first book in the Hannah Swensen series. I look forward to trying to read a book a month for as long as it takes. With twenty-four books in the series to-date, and the twenty-fifth coming in February, 2020, I have quite a bit to look forward to
January 24, 2023
I came into this one expecting a super cheesy cozy mystery type of novel. Honestly, I ended up liking Hannah and not being immensely annoyed by her, which was surprising.
However, there is a section in the book with Hannah disgustingly fat shaming another character and then talking about weight to be lost after the holidays on herself. This didn't add anything to the story and degraded her character.
The recipe tidbits were fun, but I would rather have them all collected at the end of the book instead of breaking up the story so many times.
Overall, the mystery was fun. The book was light and a quick read. I will continue with this one even if the ending love triangle creation was a bit of a stretch.
3-3.5 stars for me
However, there is a section in the book with Hannah disgustingly fat shaming another character and then talking about weight to be lost after the holidays on herself. This didn't add anything to the story and degraded her character.
The recipe tidbits were fun, but I would rather have them all collected at the end of the book instead of breaking up the story so many times.
Overall, the mystery was fun. The book was light and a quick read. I will continue with this one even if the ending love triangle creation was a bit of a stretch.
3-3.5 stars for me
November 28, 2017
this book will definitely leave you craving for delicious cookies. mystery was also interesting and engrossing. I do hope the other books in the series keep my attention.
July 26, 2019
Drivel
December 14, 2022
Hannah Swensen owns The Cookie Jar, a small coffee house and bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota. Life in this small town is good, until Hannah finds Ron LaSalle, the delivery man for Cozy Cow Dairy, murdered in the alley behind the bakery. As Hannah discusses the murder with her brother-in-law, Deputy Sheriff Bill Todd, he asks her to help him uncover the killer.
This is the first book in the Hannah Swensen series. I liked Hannah and her determination to help her brother-in-law solve this mystery, but I did find it strange that he would ask her to help. I don't think the police would want a civilian interviewing suspects. But, it did move the story forward and put Hannah into the thick of the whodunit.
This mystery had loads of suspects with a couple red herrings. I eliminated some suspects only to add them back to the list later. I'm looking forward to more of this series. My rating: 3.5 Stars.
This is the first book in the Hannah Swensen series. I liked Hannah and her determination to help her brother-in-law solve this mystery, but I did find it strange that he would ask her to help. I don't think the police would want a civilian interviewing suspects. But, it did move the story forward and put Hannah into the thick of the whodunit.
This mystery had loads of suspects with a couple red herrings. I eliminated some suspects only to add them back to the list later. I'm looking forward to more of this series. My rating: 3.5 Stars.
March 21, 2017
Read~August 30, 2010
3 1/2 Stars
In a way, I was hoping to NOT like this book, because I so do NOT need to be starting another series. Sigh. There goes another wish ungranted, because....
I really LIKED this book. The characters are hilarious, the story/mystery is fun and challenging and the recipes are..pardon the pun..to DIE for!!! ;-)
Hannah is a delightful heroine, and the cast of characters that come along wi6th her and equally delightful! AND, I didn't know "who-dun-it"!!! YAY YAY YAY!!!!!
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