Book Review: Smugglers and Scones

Morgan C. Talbot began her delightful Moorehaven Mysteries culinary mystery series as a USA Today Best Seller with Smugglers and Scones. Great way to start, eh? Red Adept Publishing released this book almost a year ago.

The setting is Moorehaven, a B&B located in the home of now-deceased classic mystery writer, A. Raymond Moore. Per the dead author’s instructions, Pippa operates Moorehaven as a retreat dedicated to mystery writers. No one else can book a room, so don’t get your hopes up. Darn!

Moorehaven’s beautiful seaside community in Oregon offers a perfect blend of serenity and stimulation for the mystery writers working on their manuscripts.

A. Raymond Moore author quotes open each chapter and reveal this mysterious man and set up each chapter’s focus. Talbot chose a delightful device to enrich her story.

Put together a local tale that is almost a hundred years old, add in a boat crash and handsome murder suspect with amnesia, flavor with a speakeasy museum and a documentary being filmed, and, well, there’s more! This mystery provides many avenues of exploration.

The plot twists and turns in Smugglers and Scones keep the reader guessing right up to the end. The book features a panoply of potential villains.

As a writer of culinary mysteries, I am appreciative of the skill Talbot displayed in laying out the clues and taking unexpected paths toward the solution. The conclusion, after providing a good range of potential killers, is satisfying and appropriate to explain the murders. Murders? Oh, yes. There’s more than one in this cozy.

Seacrest, Oregon is peopled with the usual assortment of delightful, quirky, or just plain weird folk. When you add in the documentary film crew, an itinerant worker, and the authors who use Moorehaven for their writers’ retreats, you throw even more fun into the mix. And the mystery authors want to be part of the action. A real life murder to solve? They’re loving it!

Check out Morgan C. Talbot’s website, “Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser” at morganctalbot.blogspot.com to find information on her books and access to recipes and more!

Since I love blueberries, I picked this recipe to share with you. Thanks, Morgan, for allowing me to reprint this. Readers, trust me, you’re going to love these scones! My family did.

Blueberry Scones with Lemon Glaze

Scone ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup granulated sugar

2½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

zest of 1 large lemon

½ cup unsalted butter, cold

½ cup Greek yogurt, plain

4 tablespoons milk (for thinning yogurt)

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Egg wash ingredients

1 large egg, beaten

1 teaspoon milk

Glaze ingredients

1¼ cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon unsalted butter

Extra zest

Tips:

 - If you're using frozen berries, rinse them until the water runs mostly clear and pat them dry, then add them to the dough. - If you like a thicker, whiter glaze, add another 1/4 cup of confectioners' sugar.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F / 205 C.

2. In a bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest.

3. Chop cold butter into small pieces and add to flour mixture. Combine with pastry cutter or your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

4. In a small bowl, whisk the yogurt and milk until smooth.

5. Add egg and vanilla to yogurt blend and whisk together. Drizzle over flour mixture and stir until moistened. Fold in blueberries. Dough will be sticky.

6. Using a 2/3 cup measuring scoop, add dough to scone pan sections and press into corners with spatula. If you don’t want to use a scone pan, flatten dough into a 1” high circle on floured surface and cut into wedges with very sharp knife. Place parchment paper or silicone baking mat on a baking sheet and transfer dough to it with spatula.

7. Brush tops with egg wash.

8. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

9. Let cool 2 minutes in the pan and then transfer to a cooling rack.

10. To make glaze, whisk confectioners’ sugar, lemon juice, unsalted butter, and zest together until smooth and drizzle over cool scones.

Additional Notes

Mr. Moore made his scones with heavy cream, but I found that substituting Greek yogurt, thinned with a little milk, cuts the fat content in half while preserving the luscious flavor. Plus, Greek yogurt instead of regular plain yogurt adds a sweet tanginess.

Gluten Free Version

For GF Blueberry Scones, simply substitute a 1-for-1 GF flour for the all-purpose wheat flour. The GF flour will be a little stiffer and reluctant to fully mix, so I set aside my spoon and worked the dough with my hands until fully blended. I also measured the dough into my scone pan with my hands, but that's entirely optional. These scones are so delicious, people won't know they're GF!

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Facebook: Looking for a new voice in culinary mysteries? Morgan C. Talbot has a tightly plotted mystery laced with mention of and recipes for delectable scones. Check out the review of SMUGGLERS AND SCONES and try one of the book’s recipes. http://bit.ly/2oC57fk

Twitter: Blueberry Scones w/ Lemon Glaze #Recipe and review of new book by culinary mystery writer @MorganCTalbot’s SMUGGLERS AND SCONES http://bit.ly/2oC57fk

Book Review: GRIME AND PUNISHMENT

One of my favorite cozy writers teamed up with her daughter (again) to write a new cozy series. Sylvia Selfman and Leigh Selfman created a housecleaner amateur sleuth. Talk about a career that reveals where the dirt is piled up! Livy is uniquely positioned to know information about victims and suspects that is helpful to the attractive detective on the case.

Okay, I’ll be honest. Livy, the protag, is great and I really like what it seems to be book one in a new series. But I’m in love with the Izzy Greene series that Sylvia wrote by herself. Izzy and her ensemble of crazy characters is just the best. If you haven’t seen her “Senior Snoops” series, you are missing a treat.

But that has nothing to do with this series which stands well on its own. It employs the same sardonic tone that the Selfmans use to such great advantage in their other co-authored books. I envy them. I want to write funny, too. I admire them for that and more.

This ensemble cast of characters include a caring, worried daughter, the gay best friend who shares pet-rearing responsibilities, the detective who wants her out of it, and friends and clients with very interesting quirks. Who will still be around in book 2? Can’t wait to find out!

In Grime and Punishment, Livy finds the husband of one of her clients stabbed to death. Who could want to kill the popular celebrity plastic surgeon? The wife is always a suspect. The secret girlfriend who suddenly disappears after his death? The sister of the secret girlfriend? The nosy neighbor? A disgruntled patient unhappy with the results? Someone from his past? A burglary gone bad? My mind generated lots of suspects beyond what the authors provided. That’s a sign of a well-set up mystery when the reader anticipates possibilities.

When Livy snoops around for clues in the various homes she cleans, she, of course, puts herself at risk by drawing attention to her unwanted delving. Even a violent encounter, however, doesn’t deter her curiosity. Will she risk even more as she continues her investigation? Of course she will! But, don’t worry. Livy will survive and thrive. This is a cozy mystery.

But, the twists and turns will keep your brain considering possibilities. An entertaining way to fight incipient dementia!

Given the penchant among cozy mystery writers for punny titles, I wondered what the team’s future books will be called. Suck it Up? Wash and Died? Cleaned Out? A Rising Tide? A Dust Up? Floored? Swept under the Rug? Polished Off? So many possibilities! I wish Sylvia Selfman and Leigh Selfman the best of luck with this new series. I’m already a fan! Get your copy here!

Facebook: A delightful cozy mystery review for Sylvia Selfman and Leigh Selfman’s GRIME AND PUNISHMENT. A delight new series by this talented team. Check it out at http://bit.ly/2xiSGJj

Twitter: @SylviaSelfman and @LeighSelfman’s funny new cozy GRIME AND PUNISHMENT reviewed at http://bit.ly/2xiSGJj

Are Cozies "Real" Mysteries?

Well, of course they are! However, in the mystery/thriller world cozies are the equivalent of “the little lady”, nice enough but somewhat insubstantial, easily dismissed as a lightweight with little to offer.

Is my bias showing? Absolutely! Why is there always a pecking order? Pecking Order Syndrome shows up in all sorts of places, and ultimately, racial discrimination can be traced to it. As a kid growing up in a family of West Virginia hillbillies living in Ohio, I remember the prejudice my parents exhibited and believed.

Did my term “West Virginia hillbillies living in Ohio” send you a signal? It should have. Hill people from Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia who had moved to Ohio for jobs, were looked down on. Hillbillies were denigrated by the dominant and native white group. So, hillbillies had to make a group lower than they were on the social scale. The hillbillies of my acquaintance uniformly disliked Blacks. It was their way of feeling better about themselves.

Translating the Pecking Order Syndrome to novels, in the mystery/thriller world, thrillers are more highly regarded than mystery. International thrillers top domestic thrillers for sophistication and cross-country plotting and travel. But both are viewed as superior to mysteries.

Among mysteries, the traditional mystery is still Queen of the Hill. These classic mysteries are revered. For the rest of the subgenres, there is also a pecking order. Police procedurals and medical mysteries with all the technical detail and knowledge required are superior (in many eyes) to other mysteries.

And the lowly cozies—aren’t they cute little things—are at the bottom of the heap.

Oh, yeah? Well, listen up, Bud. Plotting any mystery, laying out the clues, pacing the action, finding relevant subplots, and creating compelling characters is identical in every mystery/thriller written.

You don’t have to have blood and gore on the page for the essential mystery. That’s just the value-added that police procedurals and thrillers bring to the party. The value-added for cozies is learning about a hobby or special interest of the author.

I am a pretty good cooker and know a lot about food. A retired police detective knows a lot about how crooks are caught and treated. Both of us are experts in our fields. Expertise is the commodity that both cozies and thrillers and other mystery subgenres share. Should we value one kind of expertise more than another?

I don’t believe so. What I prefer to read is merely that, a preference. Given great writing, expertise should be valued in any subgenre. 

If you think others would be interested in this post, please share on social media. I’ve prepared a couple of posts you can cut and paste or create your own.

Facebook: “I don’t get no respect,” might be what the cozy mystery genre might say were it able to talk. Do you agree that many regard cozies as an “also ran” kind of mystery? http://bit.ly/2uQq73K

Twitter: Are cozy mysteries equivalent to traditional mysteries or are they just fluff? @good2tweat offers her viewpoint at http://bit.ly/2uQq73K

 

17 Steps to Writing Culinary Mysteries

Potluck, book three in the “dinner is served” series, won the readers’ contest for which book I will write for National Novel Writing Month. Wahoo! My publisher, Billie Johnson at Oak Tree Press, will be delighted that this one won’t take as long to get to her as book two has!

This post borrows portions from the blog over at Write onSisters that I write on Tuesdays. Over there, I wrote about cozy mysteries and what the 16 elements are for writing a cozy. In this post, I want to drill down even deeper to talks about a special kind of cozy: the culinary mystery.

A culinary mystery is a sub-genre of cozy mysteries that prominently features food. Often that is done through the profession of the amateur sleuth. Less often, food is presented as important to a character, and well-described, but no recipe is given. Most often that happens with detectives who relish (!) food or with food critics describing restaurant fare.

Other culinary mysteries, in fact most of them, have the amateur sleuth involved in food preparation in some way. They might be personal chefs, caterers, cooking school teachers, restaurant chefs, or bakery owners. In one series, the woman is just a great home cook.

Many of the elements of the traditional mystery appear in other sub-genres of mystery. Cozies are a variant on the theme. In the list below, the first seven elements are the same in cozies and traditional mysteries, but to make your mystery a cozy, you need to add in nine more elements. Number 17 is what makes your cozy a culinary mystery.

1) Cozy mysteries are always a puzzle to solve.

2) All clues are revealed to the reader but obscured with red herrings and false leads.

3) Cozy mysteries feature a murder (most often) or a crime of great substance.

4) The victim typically is not admirable, thus the crime, if not justifiable, is often understandable.

5) The murder or other significant crime often occurs very near the beginning, in the opening pages. But not always. Cozies can introduce the murder well into the story.

6) Murders take place “off stage” so there is little or no explicit violence or gore described.

7) Cozy mysteries use plot devices to further the confusion of clues, suspects, and timelines.

8) The reluctant and very clever sleuth uses common sense to solve the mystery, is not a professional, and is drawn into solving the crime by circumstances.

9) The villain is clever and smart but not equal to the sleuth.

10) Cozy mysteries are most often set in a small town or rural setting so you get to know residents across books.

11) Almost all cozy mysteries are a series.

12) The cozy mystery series usually has a theme or an occupation or a hobby to tie it together.

13) Cozies involve more active crime solving than traditional mysteries. Readers want more than somebody being interviewed. Cozies have more action and dangerous situations. However, they are still considered light reading in the mystery realm.

14) Whereas cozies are generally G-Rated, they have evolved to where there may be mild cursing and the mention of sex “off stage”.

15) Cozies often have humorous components and/or quirky characters.

16) Cozy mysteries often have punny titles tied to the theme/occupation/hobby of the series. My culinary mysteries for example have titles of Mission Impastable, Prime Rib and Punishment, Potluck, Cooks in the Can, Tequila Mockingbird, and Ancient Grease.

17) Culinary mysteries may or may not include recipes, but all of them feature food prominently.

If you want to start writing culinary mysteries, here are some authors to read. Note the elements so you can write these fun books, too!

Diane Mott Davidson

Leighann Dobbs

Misty Evans

Nancy Fairbanks

Jerrilyn Farmer

Jennifer L. Hart

Carolyn Hughey

Josi Kilpack

Harper Lin

Sharon Arthur Moore !

Tamar Myers

Joanne Pence

Leigh Selfman

Connie Shelton

Lou Jane Temple