The Pumpkin Muffin Murder

Pleasant read follwint the adventures of Phyllis and Sam into yet another murder in Weatherford, Texas. This one leaves you guessing until the last few pages, but the denouncement is Holmsian in that the deductions are leaps of faith rather than hard clues. ( )

It’s Thanksgiving in Weatherford, Texas and the residents of the town are celebrating their very first Harvest Festival. Retired schoolteacher and often-time sleuth Phyllis Newsom is taking care of the apple of her eye, grandson Bobby, while his parents go out of town for the holiday. But babysitting for Bobby doesn’t stop Phyllis from baking her special pumpkin, cheesecake muffins for the Harvest Festival. Nor do her grandmotherly responsibilities prevent her from finding another dead body disguised as one of the event’s scarecrows.
The dead body belongs to festival organizer Logan Powell and Phyllis discovers that in life Logan’s body was very busy indeed. He’d been having affairs with at least four of the town’s young, eligible women.
Phyllis tries to stay out of the case—sheriff’s orders—but when the autopsy reveals that Logan died right after eating one of Phyllis’s pumpkin muffins, well, what’s a good cook like Phyllis to do but jump in and solve the case?
Great fun, great recipes, great sleuth. Yummy fun!
Reviewed by Susan Santangelo, author of “Retirement Can Be Murder” for Suspense Magazine ( )