Book Review: Murder, Lies and Chocolate by Sally Berneathy

Finished reading August 22, 2013

Book synopsis from Good Reads

Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Then someone breaks into her house and tries to dig up her basement. Next her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small, old house and take his big, new house instead.

Suddenly everybody wants Lindsay's house. Is there oil under the basement, plans to bring the railroad through, pirate treasure buried in the basement? A second break-in occurs and causes her cat, King Henry, to launch into full attack mode, taking a few chunks out of the intruder.

Lindsay enlists the aid of her enigmatic neighbor, Fred, to help solve the mystery while trying to keep her police detective boyfriend, Trent, from getting in their way with his insistence on all those silly cop rules.

On the positive side, sales skyrocket for the special dessert Lindsay calls Murdered Man's Brownies. Prisoners, murderers, crazy relatives and strippers are all part of the chaos in this second book of the Death by Chocolate series.


My Review at Good Reads

5 out of 5 stars

Murder, Lies & Chocolate is an excellent follow-up book to Death By Chocolate. Like the first book it’s a good mystery told as a fun first-person story.

Lindsay Powell, the owner of the Death By Chocolate restaurant and heroine of the story, is almost dating the cop she fell for the first book but her obnoxious ex won’t sign those papers and in a smaller community a police officer just doesn’t date a married woman. But it’s easy to stay involved with the police when a man is poisoned and dies right outside of your restaurant. And so a new mystery begins.

If you read the first book and weren’t saying “just signed the papers and go away” of the obnoxious ex, you’ll be saying it now. But then again without the obnoxious ex Lindsay’s life would be too happy and normal to write a book about it. His greed, sleaze and name still on Lindsay’s house bring interesting danger and even more interesting characters into the story.

Considering what some of my favorite treats are and the poison theme running through this series so far I shouldn’t like the books, but a little poison doesn’t stop me. It’s a fun theme for a light mystery and I do very carefully check my chocolate and my beverages. If I don’t taste any poison I try some more to be sure. ;-)