Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for A Parfait Crime (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) by Maya Corrigan. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!
A Parfait Crime (A Five-Ingredient Mystery)
by Maya Corrigan
A Parfait Crime (A Five-Ingredient Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
9th in Series
Setting – Chesapeake Bay
Kensington Cozies (October 24, 2023)
Mass Market Paperback : 304 pages
A granddaughter-grandfather sleuthing duo take on a perplexing new case in the latest culinary cozy mystery, sure to appeal to fans of Diane Mott, Joanne Fluke, and Katherine Hall Page.
At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in the freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?
After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at their house to get to work—and enjoy Grandad’s five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Grandad try to retrace her final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler. . .
Includes delicious five-ingredient recipes!
Character Guest Post
Hi! My name is Bethany O’Shay. I’ve been friends with Val Deniston ever since she moved to Bayport on Maryland’s Eastern Shore two years ago. I’m a first grade teacher, and Val manages a café at the athletic club, where we both play tennis. She also caters small parties and solves murders. I’ve often helped her with both of those.
I’ve also needed her help occasionally. A few months ago I organized a mystery fan fest and asked her and her grandfather to be volunteers. Val no sooner arrived at the fest than she found a dead body. Fortunately, a real murder didn’t put a damper on the gathering of mystery lovers. And when Val and her grandfather put their heads together, no murderer can escape. Not long after the festival, they were on the trail of another killer.
It all started in the Agatha Christie book club I belong to. One of our members, Jane, proposed that we put on a play to raise money for a local charity. Another club member had experience acting and directing plays before she retired. She suggested we do a Readers Theater production, a dramatic reading of the script with the cast on stage for the performance. Perfect. No lines to memorize.
We chose Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, the play that’s been running in London since 1952. More important than its popularity, though, was the small cast needed to stage it: 4 women and 4 men. But we had five women and only one man from the club willing to take roles. Even with one woman playing a male part, we were still short three men, so I talked Val’s grandfather, her boyfriend, and my boyfriend, who’s in the Bayport Police, to take those parts.
We had our first two rehearsals at Jane’s house, where she served us a wonderful afternoon tea with scones and lovely parfaits during our break between the acts. When we found out that sweet Jane had died in a house fire set by an arsonist, we were all devastated. To honor her and to raise money for her favorite charity, we decided to go on with the show. Val’s granddad offered to host the rehearsals at the house he and Val share and to make tea and parfait for us. And we talked Val into taking Jane’s place in the cast.
At our first rehearsal after Jane’s death, one of the older women in the cast declared that Jane had been murdered and insisted that Val and her granddad figure out whodunit. Of course, as a member of the Christie book club, the woman had murder on her mind. On the other hand, she might have been on to something. I remembered that the usually cheerful Jane had looked troubled after coming back from a job interview at the spa.
To make a long story short, Val got a gig running a smoothie bar at the spa’s gala open house and asked me to help her. I didn’t know it at the time, but she, her boyfriend, and her granddad anticipated trouble and were keeping tabs on suspicious people at the open house. You’ll have to read A Parfait Crime to find out what happened there.
About Maya Corrigan
Maya (Mary Ann) Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manager Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. In the 9th book of the series, A Parfait Crime, Val and Granddad rehearse an Agatha Christie play with a cast that includes murder suspects. A Virginia resident, Maya has taught college courses in writing, detective fiction, and literature. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website — https://mayacorrigan.com — for book news, easy recipes, and mystery history and trivia.
Author Links
Website: https://mayacorrigan.com.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mayacorriganbooks
Newsletter signup: https://www.mayacorrigan.com/newscontact.html
Blog: https://MysteryLoversKitchen.com
Purchase Links – Kensington Paperback – Kensington E-Book – Amazon – B&N – Kobo
Enter the Giveaway
A Parfait TOUR PARTICIPANTS
October 27 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
October 27 – #BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee – SPOTLIGHT
October 28 – StoreyBook Reviews – AUTHOR GUEST POST
October 28 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
October 29 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
October 29 – Guatemala Paula Loves to Read – REVIEW
October 30 – Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense – RECIPE
October 30 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – CHARACTER GUEST POST
October 31 – Ascroft, eh? – AUTHOR GUEST POST
October 31 – My Reading Journeys – REVIEW
November 1 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
November 1 – Lady Hawkeye – SPOTLIGHT
November 2 – Literary Gold – SPOTLIGHT
November 2 – Carla Loves To Read – REVIEW
November 3 – Cassidy’s Bookshelves – SPOTLIGHT
November 3 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT
November 4 – fundinmental – SPOTLIGHT
November 4 – Reading Is My SuperPower – REVIEW
November 5 – The Mystery Section – RECIPE
November 5 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
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So many wonderful books to read! I am so excited!
This sounds like a sweet mystery read!
Sounds like a thrilling read!
Sounds like a fun cozy mystery with a cute cover!
I love reading. stories with. food in it .
I like the title & book cover!
This sounds like a wonderful cozy mystery and I can’t wait to read it.