Nice. Definitely needed a fun cozy mystery. I think I will keep up with this series. I like to keep them in rotation with the more grisly mystery books that I read. I thought this was great and the main character Gina is going to be fun to follow. I also laughed out loud several times while reading. At one point someone goes to Gina, “Well color me brown and call me a candy bar.” I have no idea if this is a real saying, but I laughed for five minutes straight. This cozy also follows all of the well known tropes, amateur sleuth, murder victim who dies in a somewhat weird way, love interest of the detective in town, and a potential second love interest, etc.
“Slice of Murder” follows Gina Romano who returns to her hometown of Lake Basil from “The City” (New York). She leaves after finding her ex-fiancée cheating which led to him ousting her from their place of work. She goes home in order to recover a bit. Going to her uncle’s pizza restaurant, she finds him gone, the restaurant a mess, and a drunken chef (Nico). Gina fires him and then quickly learns her uncle has been ill and had no choice but to hand over the business to someone else. When Nico is found dead later in the restaurant, rumors stirred up by her high school nemesis has Gina worried she may be arrested. She starts to investigate and finds out that many people had a motive to kill Nico.
I liked Gina. Some of the cozy mystery leads I have a hard time with since most of them just decide to start investigating things and end up making things worse. I thought Gina was written very smart and she didn’t put herself in any dangerous situations. You also get the guilt she feels for leaving her uncle and aunt to run the business and not realizing they needed her help. Her budding friendship with Matilda was great. As was Matilda’s cat Jumbo.
The other characters I assume we will get to know more about such as Detective Carter, Jacob, etc. and I can’t wait to continue to read about them.
The writing was very well done I thought. The book flow kept a nice even pace. Point did a great job of setting up places and the setting of Lake Basil and the stores and people that live there have definitely peaked my interest.
The reveal of the murderer and why they killed Nico was a shocker too. I definitely was not expecting that.
There’s also a recipe for pizza in this, and I recommend not reading this if you are hungry. Between the pizza descriptions and the bakery descriptions, I kept wanting something to snack on.