Lockwood, Sonoma Valley, hosts an annual Labor Day weekend festival called Dairy Days. Willa Bauer of the lively Cheese Shop Mystery series will be running a stall, so itβs a fair guess that someone will be making a one-way trip to the event. FONDUE OR DIE proceeds as expected, but we canβt blame Willa. Sheβs only trying to help.
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With her staff at her cheese shop, Curds & Whey, in the nearby town of Yarrow Glen, Willa prepares a variety of sampling boxes for sale at the festival. At this stage, she hasnβt been open for two years yet, and any publicity is good. The Miss Dairy pageant is particularly interesting as the beauty contest for older teen girls provides a college scholarship to the winner. Β The pageant runner, Nadine, keeps everyone busy, and while Willa is setting up for Dairy Days, she meets other involved ladies, such as the dynamic mothers of the budding beauties, and the judges of various contests. Then it all goes wrong.
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Exploring a historic home museum, Willa finds Nadineβs dead body under a bookcase and some heavy ceramic milk jugs. Obviously, there must have been an accident, maybe caused by Nadineβs unfamiliarity with the motorised scooter she started using after hurting her ankle a week previously. Come to think of it, Nadine had an unusual accident that time too. Coincidence or organised? The police decide to keep a lid on open suspicion, so as not to cancel or tarnish the Dairy Days event. Livelihoods could be ruined. Willaβs employee, Mrs. Schultz, is asked to step in and take a larger role in organising. As a senior lady, sheβs not really a suspect, but there could be gossip.
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Detective Heath once more features in this Cheese Shop Mystery, but he and Willa are occasionally dating and not going steady. Running a small business is hugely time-consuming, and as this is Willaβs fifth time to get involved with murder, Heath has not been able to date a witness to a crime. Be that as it may, he seems a pleasant, obliging gentleman, and in this case, he has to defer to Chief Womack of Lockwood. I also like that the memorably named Grace Kelp arrives, a journalist who won the dairy scholarship a few years ago and is determined to tell the world that looks do not equate with achievement for young women. FONDUE OR DIE by Korina Moss mixes established characters with new ones in this cosy crime story with cheese galore. I would have thought in a California summer they would eat more salads, but customers seem delighted with the samples and pasta feasts. Tasty indeed.
The small town of Yarrow Glen’s neighbor, Lockwood, hosts an annual Labor Day weekend bash: Dairy Days. And Willa Bauer and her cheese shop, Curds & Whey, refuse to miss out on the fun. Willa is thrilled to celebrate her favorite thing—she is a cheesemonger after all—and this festival goes all out: butter sculptures, goat races, cheese wheel relays, even a Miss Dairy pageant. Too bad the pageant runner, Nadine, is treating Dairy Days prep like it’s fondue or die and is putting everyone around her on edge.
When Willa finds Nadine’s dead body under years’ worth of ceramic milk jugs, the police aren’t sure whether the death was an accident. But fingers are pointing at Willa’s employee, Mrs. Schultz, who steps in to help the pageant after Nadine’s death. Someone wanted Nadine out of the whey, and Willa is going to find out who.
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