Meet Your Baker: 03/21/24

Meet Your Baker by Ellie Alexander and Dina Pearlman (Narrator) (2014) is set in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Shakespeare festival. Juliet Capshaw returns home to her mother's bakery after working as a chef on a cruise ship. She found out about her husband's infidelity and has come home to grieve and start over. She decides to work out her frustration at her mother's bakery, Torte. Barely home for a day and she finds Nancy Hudson, an unlikeable board member for the festival dead amongst the jam jars.

The mystery takes a little while to get settled. Jules describes not having her land legs back from being aboard ship for long while walking through Ashland. If I weren't familiar with the location I would have let that comment go, but Ashland is landlocked. It would have taken her some time to get from wherever the ship docked to Ashland.

It's really not until Nancy Hudson's body is discovered that the book finds its rhythm. The remaining set up is very much like the first book in the Maine Clambake mystery series by Barbara Ross. Jules has come home to a failing business and she can either let it fail and go back to her life at sea or use her nest egg and understanding of how to run a restaurant to save it.

The mystery itself was fairly easy to solve and unfortunately relies on the murderer revealing themselves in the climax. Although Jules was investigating her theories were all over the place and nowhere near the obvious solution. Hopefully her experience here will aid in her sleuthing in the subsequent books.

The second book is A Batter of Life and Death (2015).

Four stars

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