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With coffee and crime brewing, you’ll love reading this with a mug of hot coffee beside you
After everything Clare and Mike have been through, they deserve a little bit of happily ever after. So when Mike decides to put a ring on Clare's finger, Clare's eccentric octogenarian employer is there to help.
She donates the perfect coffee-colored diamonds to include in the setting and the name of a world-famous jeweler who happens to be an old family friend. But while the engagement is steeped in perfection, the celebration is not long lived.
First, a grim-faced attorney interrupts their party with a mysterious letter bequeathing a strange, hidden treasure to Clare's daughter. Next, the renowned jeweler who designed Clare's ring is found poisoned in his shop.
Both events appear to be connected to a cold case murder involving a sunken ship, an Italian curse, a suspiciously charming jewel thief, and a shocking family secret. With deadly trouble brewing, Clare must track down clues in some of New York's most secret places before an old vendetta starts producing fresh corpses.
I was in desperate need for a reading reset brain wise. I'd been reading a lot of the same genre of books for awhile and several of them all sounded nearly identical to the other and my reading pace was starting to lag so I could feel myself starting to burn out a little bit.
Dead Cold Brew was a great re-set for me. It was a great fresh read with an entirely new genre, new author, new story, new everything.
I really liked Dead Cold Brew. It wasn't highly exciting but its got a lot of layers with a lot of well developed story and it was fun.
I liked that this time around that the romance factor - although totally adorable and a decent focus in this book was sweet, it was passionate but it wasn't all sex and it wasn't all pornographic interaction. Its romantic love without the need for rubber sheets.
The whammy double layer mystery is great because it kept me guessing and wasn't easily guessed from the beginning which I really love. I highly highly love stories that can keep me guessing. I get so bummed when I can guess from the beginning who and what is bad and going on.
I really enjoyed Coyle's voice, her personality, I enjoyed her world and the cast that she has brought to life. Dead Cold Brew is fantastic and I really enjoyed it from beginning to end. From easy pace - to fresh face author loved it.
Krissy's Bookshelf Reviews received a digital copy. All thoughts, comments and ratings are my own.
Krissy's Bookshelf Reviews received a digital copy in exchange for an honest review from the publisher via Netgalley.
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Dead to the Last Drop
Coffeehouse Mystery, #15
Cleo Coyle
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Publisher: Berkley
Date of Publication: December 1, 2015
Number of pages: 414
Cover Artist: Cathy Gendron
From the New York Times bestselling author of Once Upon a Grind comes a new installment in the Coffeehouse Mystery series.
After the White House asks coffeehouse manager and master roaster Clare Cosi to consult on the coffee service for a Rose Garden Wedding, she discovers a historic pot was used as a CIA “dead drop” decades before. Now long-simmering secrets boil over, scalding Clare and the people around her…
Clare’s visit to the nation’s capital is off to a graceful start. Her octogenarian employer is bunking with her in a charming Georgetown mansion, and she's invited to work with a respected curator on the Smithsonian's culinary salute to coffee in America.
Unfortunately, Clare’s new Village Blend DC is struggling to earn a profit—until its second floor jazz club attracts a high-profile fan, the college-age daughter of the U.S. President. Clare’s stock rises as the First Lady befriends her, but she soon learns a stark lesson: Washington can be murder.
First a stylish State Department employee suspiciously collapses in her coffeehouse. Then the President’s daughter goes missing. Is she a runaway bride or is something more sinister in play? After another deadly twist, Clare is on the run with her NYPD detective boyfriend. Branded an enemy of the state, she must piece together clues and uncover the truth before her life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness come to a bitter end.
Review:
It's hard to believe that this series has reached 15 books. And although I was late to this series, not starting it until 2011, I quickly got wrapped up in the life of Clare Cosi, manager of a The Village Blend.
As the series suggest, the mysteries revolve around a coffee house, specifically The Village Blend, a coffeehouse in historic Greenwich Village. A coffeehouse that has been family owned and operated since it's inception in 1895. The series started with Clare once again taking over as manager for her former mother-in-law, Madame DuBois, once Clare's daughter Joy moved out to go to Culinary School. Clare's ex-husband and Madame's son, is a coffee buyer, combing the globe for coffee beans to be brought back to be roasted at the coffeehouse. We have followed Clare along her journey, finding murder and mystery along the way.
One of the great things about this series is that although there have been some very upper crust moments (I'm looking at you Billionaire Blend), most of the time, the stories have a more blue collar feel. After all, Clare may be the manager and master roaster at the coffeehouse, but she still works pulling espressos and serving customers there as well. And her boyfriend is a NYPD police detective.
There was a unique beginning to this story. Where normally the prologue takes us through the mind of the killer as he plans and/or executes the murder. This time, it was told through the eyes of the man rushing to protect her. It was awesome! Then to add to the unique opening, the story was told in flashback sequences as Clare talks out events with Mike. It's not something I want to see every book, but in this circumstance, it really just worked.
I had a crazy, happy coincidence happen while reading this book. Many, many years ago (okay, so like 25) I fell in love with the movie Highlander and that song "Who Wants to Live Forever" by Queen - enough so that I eventually hunted down the soundtrack. As these things happen, it eventually fell out of regular rotation. But I recently heard an awesome version of it, and dug out the CD to listen to in my car. So I was jamming out to on the way to work, and then at lunch, there I am reading about the song in the book. It totally blew my mind! Needless to say, this book will be one that will stick with me. :)
This was such a great book, I adored everything about it. For me, this was a 5 star read.
Thanks to Cleo Coyle and Great Escapes for the opportunity to read and review this book.
Giveaway:
Author Bio:
CLEO COYLE is the pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, writing in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini. CLEO COYLE grew up in a small town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After earning scholarships to study writing at Carnegie Mellon and American Universities, she began her career as a cub reporter for The New York Times. Now an author of popular fiction and New York Times bestselling media tie-in writer, Cleo lives and works in New York City, where she collaborates with her husband (also a bestselling author) to pen the Coffeehouse Mysteries for Penguin. Together Cleo and her husband also write the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries under the name Alice Kimberly. When not haunting coffeehouses, hunting ghosts, or rescuing stray cats, Cleo and Marc are bestselling media tie-in writers who have penned properties for NBC, Lucasfilm, Disney, Fox, Imagine, and MGM. In their spare time they cook like crazy and drink a lot of java. You can learn more about Cleo, her husband, and the books they write by visiting www.CoffeehouseMystery.com.
To connect with the author online:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads
I am always on the lookout for historic snark. Mainly because every now and then someone will write something passionate online, full of despair over people who aren't being polite and how this is ruining our society - something like that. After all, society has survived snark in the past, and the squabbling and the drama. It makes me smile when people think there was a golden era of politeness, when people weren't...well, people. So I enjoy reading about the snark of ages past and wondering how people find this so easy to forget.
For instance! In the 1700s in London they didn't have blogs, but there was the same desire to write about someone or something that was annoying. What did the literate folk do? They wrote snarky broadsides or pamphlets - which could contain essays, poems, tavern songs,etc. (Also see street literature.) These were printed out and distributed. Not for money - this was not about profit (gentlemen don't dirty their hands with that) - only to get it and the (hopefully) witty writing talked about. The subject of your annoyance could get in a huff and write a response and then distribute broadsides of his own. You could go after anyone in writing - but of course, there was always the possibility you'd get called out for a duel or even jail if you were spouting anything hinting treason. But a lot of the snark was of a personal, gossipy nature for the usual human reasons.
Sometimes a snark war would break out in a newspaper's/periodical's letters section. With one person starting it, then the target defending himself (or a good friend stepping in as author) in a response letter, and so on. Afterwards, if the topic was really juicy or you just didn't want anyone to forget the subject of the snark or perhaps how great you were in your snarky writing, you could print up the whole series of letters as a book - which again, you'd not sell, but hand around to friends. Who might eventually see to it that the subject of the snark would get a copy too. Thus perhaps re-starting the snark war. (Randomly I have no idea if snark war is a real phrase I've previously read or not.)
This snark writing was usually done by someone with money, because otherwise you'd want to sell your writing. Lots of class issues in there of course, with the assumption that selling your work meant you weren't a worthy author or scholar. (Again, the whole "gentleman and truly educated people don't work" thing.) If you couldn't write in a witty manner? You could have a friend write for you - and sometimes they'd go ahead and do this without asking you. Surprise! Everyone's talking about you because I just wrote an amusing defense for something you'd not heard you'd been snarked over!
Now I'm not saying all this is particularly good - I am saying this is pretty much what goes on here and there online now. Not a vast amount has changed this way - except perhaps the extremes. (Though remember, duels. Death threats and writing were always there - go read up on Mark Twain's newspaper editing days.) Even if the writing didn't use your name there were loads of clues in the text so that everyone knew who the author was snarking on. (It helped that this mostly went on in a fairly small group of aristocrats and politicians, and their friends.)
So with that in mind - I'm actually bringing the topic around to this book! So when the coffeehouse became wildly popular in the UK of the late 1660s and 1700s, not everyone was a fan. Men gathered in coffeehouses for hours, reading newspapers and discussing politics, literature, etc. Tavern keepers didn't like the competition and those in power didn't like the idea of people criticizing politics.
