This was a decent mystery but it's so short, took a little under an hour to read that it really has no time to develop the characters, even the main character Heather and her friend Amy are really little more then sketches and barely more developed then the minor characters in the story. I'll read a couple more to see if I do in fact like the characters. ( )

Strawberry Cream Murder is the first book in the Donut Hole Mystery series. I have several of these books on my Kindle, and never seem get around to reading them. This year I have challenged myself to read more backlist books from my own bookshelves, and I decided today was a good day to make a dent in the 400 books on my Kindle. This cozy mystery series has been waiting in the queue for almost two years -- time to start reading!

The basics: Heather Janke owns a donut shop. She just had to fire one of her employees for stealing some of her donut recipes and secretly preparing to open her own shop across town. On the day Christa Fordyce was to open her new donut shop, she was found dead on the floor of her store, a donut laying next to her and crumbs on her face. Heather immediately feels that there is foul play involved as Christa was a neat freak and never would have been eating in the customer area of her store, let alone dying with crumbs on her. She begins to investigate, to the chagrin of local police detective Ryan Shepherd. Did someone kill Christa? And why?

This story is a quick read. There isn't much in the way of character development and the mystery moves along at a fast pace. There are some editing issues with the version I have. Not sure if there is an updated version that fixes the mistakes I found. For example at one point Heather calls Christa's mother to get information and express sympathy at the death of her child. The mother says "It was so sudden. You never expect your children to outlive you.'' Really?? That's a pretty big error since she really should be saying "You never expect to outlive your children.''

Editing issues aside....this is a cute, cozy mystery. The short length makes it a perfect read for short trips or while waiting for an appointment, etc. The story is fast paced and not complicated. I will definitely be reading more of this series, as I have several of the books saved on my Kindle. I hope subsequent books are a bit more developed with fewer mistakes. But, the errors weren't bad enough to lessen my enjoyment of the story that much.

There are 60 short novellas in the Donut Hole Mystery series. I might be reading for a long, long time! ha ha :) Only problem is....each book is named after a different type of donut with a lovely donut illustration as the cover. Makes me hungry!!! :)

On to book #2! :) ( )