DEATH BY CHOCOLATE MARSHMALLOW PIE

A rival’s death brings nothing but trouble to a rural Maine baker.

It’s not all moonlight and roses for Jacobia Tiptree, known to Eastport’s chocolate fans as Jake. Her father and stepmother are quarreling about his plans to move from the home they share with Jake into assisted living. Her son, Sam, and daughter-in-law, Mika, are having some yet-to-be-disclosed disagreement. And while drama dominates at home, there’s also stress at work ever since Brad Fairway, whom Jake thinks she remembers vaguely from her days in New York laundering money for the mob, opens up high-end patisserie Choco’s directly across Water Street from Jake and Ellie White’s Chocolate Moose. But finding Brad shot to death in his shop proves no solution to Jake’s business woes, since the local police immediately pounce on Ellie as their sole suspect. While Ellie waits to be thrown in the slammer, Jake searches frantically for alternatives, beginning with Brad’s lady friend Babs Littrell, a local textile artist. Her investigation takes her into Eastport’s art scene, where she meets a painter, a potter with a pet pig named Jillian, a virtual artist, and a cross-eyed Siamese cat who charms the pants off Jake’s stepmom. What she doesn’t meet is success, until an accidental encounter with the real murderer puts Jake’s life in serious jeopardy.

Offering a peek into the world of 21st-century fine art gives an extra shot of class to a standard shopkeeper cozy.