Don’t touch that cupcake! Or, I should say, don’t touch that cupcake if it gets close to Halloween. Three authors , Carlene O’Connor, Liz Ireland, and Carol J. Perry offer their amateur sleuths the chance to celebrate Halloween, despite a cupcake of death in Halloween Cupcake Murder.
Carlene O’Connor’s “Halloween Cupcake Murder” is set in Galway, Ireland. Tara Meehan needs decorations for her architectural salvage shop because Galway goes all out for Halloween. She buys a few items, including a painting called “Cave of the Cats”, at a strange little shop. She almost collides with a masked figure when she returns later. When she finds the shop owner dead, she suspects the masked figure and a strange group who call themselves The Samhain Six. They have a strong interest in the “Cave of the Cats” painting, and they urge Tara to join their group. She’s willing to play along if it will help to find a killer.
“Mrs. Claus and the Candy Corn Caper” is Liz Ireland’s novella that precedes her September mystery, Mrs. Claus and the Trouble with Turkeys. Every time April Claus tries to introduce a new holiday to Santaland, there’s trouble. This time, there’s a theft of a large candy corn shipment the week before Halloween. This causes trouble for the local bakers who were depending on the candy corn as the theme ingredient for the Halloween bake-off. When an elf baker is killed, and his grieving mother asks Mrs. Claus to investigate, it’s hard to say no. How do you turn down a grieving mother?
Carol J. Perry takes readers to Salem, Massachusetts in “A Triple Layer Halloween Murder”. Lee Barrett feels pushed aside at WICH-TV. She feels insulted when she’s asked to cover a story about a cat up a tree, but that cat, Cupcake, turns out to be owned by a well-to-do bakery owner who is missing. Lee’s new talent of scrying, seeing things in glass, gives her a clue about the missing man.
O’Connor, Ireland, and Perry all took the hint about a deadly cupcake, and successfully incorporated it into a story featuring an amateur sleuth. You’ll be eager for treats after reading Halloween Cupcake Murder, but anything with a cupcake could be a trick.
Halloween Cupcake Murder by Carlene O’Connor, Liz Ireland, and Carol J. Perry. Kensington Books, 2023. ISBN 9781496740267 (hardcover), 329p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I read a galley from NetGalley in order to review the book for a journal.
