A COLD NOSE FOR MURDER

A baker’s talking corgi continues to act as her secret sleuth.

Since leaving London with her corgi, Oliver, to open a tea shop in Trevena, Cornwall, Emma Reed has found many friends and a new love. Bringing cupcakes for a tunnel opening at the Roundhead pub, she’s on hand when pub owners Sam and Liza Greenlaw open the bricked-up smugglers’ tunnel to find not only a valuable Vincent motorbike, but also what’s left of a body. The local PC has little success interesting the higher-ups in a cold case, but the discovery sends shock waves through the village. Antiques dealers Charles and David, pals of Emma’s, were the owners of the Vincent, and the body is eventually identified as that of Sam’s cousin Sonny, who’d gone AWOL back in the 1970s. Oddly, neither the missing bike nor Sonny’s disappearance was ever reported to the police. When Oliver spots local reporter Pippa Marsh snooping and picking up something in the cellar, the brave, clever corgi tells Emma, the only one who can hear him. In an effort to protect her irascible grandfather, who was once involved with smuggling and spent time in prison, Pippa publishes stories that hint at Charles and David’s involvement. Only when the body of an unpopular rival pub owner is found do the police take an interest in the present-day murder. But Emma suspects the answers lie in the past.

Who can resist an adorable dog and a mystery that takes patient research to solve?