We received a recommendation of this book from Amazon, who seemed to know just what we needed right now: a cute cozy mystery featuring an endearing animal co-sleuth 🙂 Cruel Candy is the first of many books in Mildred Abbott’s Cozy Corgi series.
Main character, 38-year-old Fred (short for Winifred), has just inherited a Main Street shop in the small mountain town of Estes Park, Colorado. After a failed business partnership in Pennsylvania, Fred decides to pack up and move cross-country, with her delightfully smart corgi, Watson, to open a mystery bookstore in her new space. Upon inspecting her new digs, Fred meets two eccentric sisters, one of whom owns a candy shop, the other a health food store, on each side of the soon-to-be bookstore. One sister is sweet, the other not so much so, and openly expresses her anger that Fred is taking over the space she had so wanted. Of course later that night, Fred finds the latter dead in an upstairs room of her own store, having been hit over the head with a rolling pin. The mean sister had made enemies with practically everyone, leaving a town full of suspects. But when police begin to suspect Fred’s beloved stepfather, it’s up to Fred to figure out which enemy is the killer.
This is a fun, quickly-paced whodunnit with endearing, relatable sleuths (both dog and human), packed with interesting, quirky townspeople. Abbott creates such a strong setting, I really felt like I was there, and her characters were so well-drawn, I felt like I knew them. I did foresee who the killer would be, but it was still a lot of fun watching Fred and Watson catch the culprit. But most importantly for a cozy mystery series – or any kind of series – I enjoyed spending time in the world Abbott deftly created and will look forward to devouring all of the books in the series.
As an end note: I’m pretty sure this book was self-published since it was featured on Kindle Unlimited and I couldn’t find a traditional publisher’s imprint. Many romance novels these days are self-published, and other genres and subgenres (such as cozy mysteries) are going that way too, since traditional publishers supposedly can’t make enough money on them (this was one big takeaway from the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention earlier this year, and what I’ve heard several agents and editors say). I think in the future indie bookstore owners and librarians are going to be curating self-published books themselves if they want to maintain certain collections. So, imho, I found this book to be very well-written and entertaining and I think the series would make a nice addition to a mystery collection.