Scoop to Kill
Wendy Lynn Watson
Obsidian, Sep 7 2010, $6.99
ISBN: 9780451230768

In Dalliance, Texas, Tally Jones owns the upscale ice cream parlor Remember the A-la-mode. Her sister Bree and Bree's daughter Alice work there; the three females also live together. At Dickerson College, the trio attends the annual Honor's Day festivities. Alice looks for grad student Bryan Campbell who is being honored at the program.

She finds him dead, murdered by blunt force trunk from an industrial strength stapler. The victim was charging Dr. Emily Cowper with failing him on his pre-dissertation test because he refused her sexual advances. Although nobody except his family liked Bryan, Emily starts to hang around Alice at the parlor; Tally and Brea begin to know her. When Emily calls them from her home, they rush over to see if she is okay. They find her dead with her a robe's belt tied around her neck. The police and the college quickly determine suicide due to guilt over Bryan, but the trio believes otherwise and set out to prove it.

Read this entertaining amateur sleuth on a full stomach because the ice cream descriptions and recipes lead to get a craving for the treat. As with I Scream, You Scream, the second A la mode mystery is a charming cozy filled with a likable lead trio, plenty of humor and of course mouth watering ice cream. With an inside look at the cut throat academic world as seen through the threesome with so many suspects surfacing, fans will enjoy this calorie inducing amateur sleuth.

Harriet Klausner