I’m on the road today, heading out of town. It’s a lengthy trip, so Sandie Herron is stepping in for a couple days. Enjoy her remarks about a couple audiobooks, but, remember, these are available as books as well. Thank you, Sandie. And, I’ll be back on Sunday.
And, for your information, I have comment moderation on for the two days when I won’t be on the website as much. The spammers were out in force on Thursday. I don’t know what they think they gain since I delete the posts as soon as I see them. And, everyone here is too smart to take marriage advice from a spammer.
In the meantime, thank you, Sandie.
*****
DECAFFEINATED CORPSE
Series: Coffeehouse mystery Book 5 Written by Cleo Coyle
Narrated by Rebecca Gibel
Unabridged Audiobook
Listening Length: 7 hours and 29 minutes
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Release Date: April 1, 2012
**** stars
Part owner and manager of New York’s The Village Blend coffee house in Greenwich Village, Clare Cosi has called a special meeting of her best baristas. Her ex-husband Matt Allegro and his friend Rick have a new coffee they want them to taste. When she tells them that demand for decaffeinated coffee has risen to 20 percent of their customers, they can’t believe so many want the “neutered” blend. After all, there are only a couple ways to decaffeinate coffee, and they both strip away some of the essence of the bean, leaving it flat. Now Rick is making the Village Blend the exclusive distributor of his new naturally decaffeinated coffee. His coffee hybrids grow decaffeinated beans, so no further processing is required, leaving the flavor fully intact. This premier group of baristas and Clare can’t believe it when they actually taste how good the coffee really is.
Clare puts clues together to determine that Rick has smuggled a cutting from his hybrid coffee plant into the US from Brazil to make it available for inspection during a press conference announcing the bean’s existence and celebrating its distribution exclusively through The Village Blend. When the reception is upon them, Matt is attached to his cell phone, which worries Clare; what is Matt paying such close attention to while his buddy Rick is picking fights with a foreign diplomat in town for a special meeting of the United Nations? Clare steps outside the building to talk to Matt when a body falls from their reception 20 stories up and lands right in front of her. Things have gotten much worse.
It wouldn’t be a coffee house mystery unless Madame duBois is involved at some point. Matt’s octogenarian mother is the owner of The Village Blend. She is quite lively and will do almost anything to protect The Blend, often with hilarity following. In this book, Madame gets the three of them – Madame, Matt, and Clare – into a diplomat’s smash Halloween Party with terrific costumes. Circumstances are not intentionally funny but turn out that way. Matt and Rick and a third man all have the same costume! More clues are uncovered under all those masks.
The inevitable coffee “lesson” was much better suited for the novel in this fourth book in the series. Cleo Coyle gives information and a sort of history lesson about coffee along with the mystery, but it is all pertinent and interesting, too. These mini-lessons are some of the funniest points of the books as well, since she often makes the coffee making process quite sensual and full of double entendres.
Narrator Rebecca Gibel had quite a character list for DECAFFEINATED CORPSE. We had New York accents for Clare, Matt, and their daughter Joy as well as octogenarian Madame, a few foreign diplomats, a pawnbroker, a Caribbean born man, and so on. All the voices were distinct. Stars go to Rebecca Gibel for her hard work.
Even though I found this entry in the Coffeehouse mystery series a tiny bit bland and predictable, I still enjoyed it very much. This is a great mystery for coffee lovers and drinkers, decaf or leaded!
