While I’m working on next week’s review books for deadline, I snatched a review or two from friends. Cleo Coyle’s Honey Roasted is the nineteenth in the Coffeehouse Mystery series. Fortunately, Sandie Herron recently listened to it, and she’s sharing her review of the latest audiobook. Thanks, Sandie.
Honey Roasted
Written by Cleo Coyle (Alice Alfonsi, Marc Cerasini)
Narrated by Rebecca Gibel
Coffeehouse Mystery, Book 19
Unabridged Audiobook
Tantor Audio (2/1/2022)
Listening Length: 10 hours, 8 minutes
ASIN: B09K2QSQPR
Clare Cosi is introducing her barista staff from the Village Blend, the coffee house owned by her ex-mother-in-law Madame DuBois, with a new blend of coffee full of flower and honey notes. Suddenly they notice a few bees in the room. They trace them down to the warm roasting room in the basement where even more have gathered. From there they trace them to a vent on the roof where swarms are surrounding the warm vents. When Matt Allegro, Clare’s ex-husband and co-manager of The Blend, gathers a few dead bees, they smell like lavender, and Clare knows where they came from.
Madame’s best friend, Bea Hastings, has a prize-winning rooftop solarium where she raises this particular bee and has a huge crop of lavender for them. After calling Bea to no avail, despite the late hour, Clare and Matt go to her penthouse home only to find it vandalized and Bea unconscious. With the honey these bees make in high demand in the culinary world, Clare is certain someone attacked Bea and her hives despite the police saying it was a suicide attempt.
Meanwhile, Clare’s fiancé, Lieutenant Mike Quinn of the New York Police Department’s special unit that tracks drug overdose deaths, is too wrapped up in his own case load to pay much attention to Clare. She is trying to plan a honeymoon when she wonders if there should even be a wedding. While she’s sure of her love for him, she’s not so sure she should be a policeman’s wife.
Clare begins several searches. She’s looking for Bea’s niece, Susan, who may have been with her the night she was attacked and is next of kin who should be notified of Bea’s comatose state. This gets her mixed up in looking for Susan’s boyfriend, a chef who works in a ghost kitchen. She needs to find out why a man in white was rooting through the trash behind the Village Blend only to leave with a bag of dead bees. And just where is Franco, one of Mike’s squad who went undercover but hasn’t checked in? Clare’s many efforts cross Mike Quinn’s case load in strange and unusual ways. But it is her ultimatum that finally gets his attention.
Author Cleo Coyle (husband and wife team Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini) have brought us a delightful mystery in Honey Roasted, the 19th in the series. All our favorite characters appear, including Clare’s two cats. Each has a role to play in the many facets of this intriguing tale. The narrator of this audiobook, Rebecca Gibel, does an excellent job in voicing each character in differing, subtle ways. With numerous subplots, this story was busy and kept my interest flowing all the way to its outstanding conclusion.
