On What Grounds: 10/23/17

On What Grounds by Cleo Coyle is the start of the Coffeehouse Mystery series set in Greenwich Village. Clare Cosi has returned to Manhattan to manage the Village Blend for Madame (long time owner, and former mother-in -law). She and her cat Java will be living above the coffeehouse.

Everything is going smoothly with her move until she discovers her closer barely conscious at the bottom of the stairs. While the local beat cops think it was an accident, the assigned homicide detective thinks there might be more to what happened than a simple fall.

As I've mentioned before with these cozies, there's always a theme based around the expertise of the protagonist. Here it's coffee. I swear by the end of the book I felt like I could expertly run an espresso machine (even though I've never used one). There is a lot of coffee talk in this book; Clare talks more about coffee than Goldy does catering.

The mystery itself takes a little bit to unfold from the initial idea that it was an accident to getting leads and motives and possible suspects. Once the possible suspects are all introduced, the rest of the book is pretty fast paced.

The series is good enough that I've moved onto listening to the second book, Through the Grinder

Four stars

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