CINNAMON ROLL MURDER

A bus crash diverts cookie maven Hannah Swenson (Devil’s Food Cake Murder, 2011, etc.) at least momentarily from the train wreck of her love life.

Hannah had been looking forward to hearing the Cinnamon Roll Six perform live at the Lake Eden Inn during innkeepers Sally and Dick Laughlin’s first-ever jazz weekend. Too bad the group’s tour bus wiped out on one of the icy roads Minnesotans routinely navigate in April. The driver is dead at the scene, but Hannah and her youngest sister Michelle help paramedics load the injured musicians onto an ambulance. Still, only five of the six survive their hospital stay. Keyboardist Buddy Neiman dies, not from his relatively minor injuries but from a pair of surgical scissors plunged into his chest. So Hannah, still reeling from her breakup with Norman Rhodes, who plans to marry his fellow dentist Bev Thorndike in two weeks, seeks solace in Lake Eden’s newest murder. She soon tracks Buddy’s roots back to the Seattle jazz scene. But her investigation really starts to cook when she discovers that Dr. Bev has a Seattle connection too. Suddenly it’s not clear whether Hannah is trying to forget Norman or win him back. With sisters Michelle and Andrea at her side and mother Delores at her back, Hannah discovers that once she’s on the trail, there aren’t enough Chocolate Caramel Pecan Bars in the world to stop her from seeing justice done.

Fluke wraps up her 16th recipe-studded entry sweetly but not neatly, leaving just enough loose ends to hint at a tasty sequel.