By: Lynn Cahoon

Series:  Tourist Trap Mystery #6

ISBN: 9781601834195

Publisher: Kensington

Publication Date: 2/2/2016

Format: e-book

My Rating: 4 Stars

 

A special thank you to Kensington and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lynn Cahoon returns with another cozy and witty mystery--#6 Tourist Trap Mystery MURDER ON WHEELS, with a new business “Good for You Desserts” --a gluten-free dessert truck. A hippie mobile like look from the seventies, turns deadly.

An array of eccentric small town characters, a scavenger hunt, and a whodunit cozy murder mystery, keeping fans coming back for more. True to form, the supporting characters in Lynn’s cozy mysteries are often very broadly drawn and used as comic relief.

In this long-running humorous cozy mystery series, Jill is at the center as the witty feisty sleuth, with the hot detective boyfriend Greg—trouble seems to follow her, like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. I guess aunt Jackie is Jill's side kick, as Lula's is Stephanie's partner in crime, and Jill's hottie is Greg like Plum's cop boyfriend, Joe Morelli. Now, all we need is a Grandma Mazur, to complete the cast. Similar to Evanovich's Plum Series, you gotta keep reading Cahoon's Tourist Trap Mysteries--compulsively addictive!

As the book opens, Jill Gardner, and boyfriend/detective hunk, Greg King, along with friends, Justin and Amy are on a big scavenger hunt. Justin had talked them into a new activity for their monthly double date. Geocaching. They go out into the woods, hide an object, and then post the GPS coordinates with a list of clues for others to find the item.

Then apparently you post on the website that you “found” the spot (without spoilers), take something from the cache, and leave something for the next explorer. Jill Gardner,bookstore and coffee shop owner is now a mad geocacher, as part of The Coastal Geocache Club. Some even homeschooler families use the hobby to teach geography principles.

Austin’s (Austin’s Bike Shop) latest love is the computer guru Kacey, and they are opening a dessert truck (all gluten-free) due to her food allergies.

Jill likes to get the inside scoop from Greg, and now it appears someone has vandalized the food truck and trashed the insides and has stolen all her recipes. The only woman who would want Kacey’s recipes was the woman from whom they were stolen originally. It couldn’t be Sadie? Now worse, Kacey has been murdered.

Guess who is on the case? Unofficially, of course. 

 

From adorable golden retriever, Emma, some chocolate delights, and of course the continued warnings from Greg to Jill to stay out of the investigation (she has already started her own murder investigation notebook, before he gets the words out of his mouth), and the rest of the South Cove gang, with a little breaking and entering and some sleuthing…Never a dull moment. Always trouble brewing. Jill needs to hang out her PI license in addition to the coffee/book store.

A proper "Sleuth" needs to be intelligent, witty, and always a few steps ahead others. Jill is all of the above.

The detectives in cozy mysteries, such as Tourist Trap, are left free to eavesdrop, gather clues, and use their intuitive "feel" for the social dynamics of the community to solve the crime. Having read all six books in the series, each can be read as a standalone; however, in order to keep up with the characters and their history-- much more fun to start from the beginning and add to the collection.

A sneak preview at the previous five mysteries, for a little more temptation. BTW a new store opening across the street next to The Glass Slipper—a china shop Teattee. #7 Tea Cups and Carnage (Available June 7, 2016). Who will be murdered next?

 

 

Guidebook to Murder
Mission to Murder
If the Shoe Kills
Dressed to Kill
Killer Run
Murder on Wheels (Feb 2, 2016)
Tea Cups and Carnage (Jun 7, 2016)

 

 

 

Fresh settings, quirky characters and original twists abound in our favorite new cozies. Whether you prefer to sample exotic recipes, explore antique-filled English mansions, take a little break at a charming B&B or create a custom floral bouquet, a delightful adventure awaits in these books—oh, and murders, too. But don’t worry: The strong, determined and often hilarious women at the center of the action are sure to figure things out before it’s too late—if only just.

 

Read more here.

 After being passed over again for a yet another promotion, Zoe Chase decides that it's time she goes for dream. Starting with a old restaurant that's in real need of some major work and happens to be on the shady part of town... To get some income into her building business she runs a food truck- Biscuit Bowl that serves some Southern specialty of deep fired biscuit bowls.
Sadly, business isn't booming and to top off the day, Zoe finds a fellow competing food truck owner dead in her front seat. This sudden death puts Zoe and her friends into a murder mystery that has alot of history behind it and time is ticking to find the killer before time runs out...

Having read JJ Cook, the husband and wife team of Joyce And Jim Lavene, stories before. I knew I was in for an wonderful mystery and great characters. With 'Death on Eat Street' they have truly out done themselves, making this perhaps my favorite series from them to date.

Zoe is very relatable on many levels. She's a dreamer but more importantly she's a doer. She gets alot of slack from her parents who are divorce but always tend to join forces to make her see the "error of her way" and even try to get her to marry her ex-bf and put away her dream of cooking and making people happy because of her cooking. Thankfully she has her crazy fun Uncle Saul to back her up along with Ollie her only employee and of course her scene stealer of a cat Crème Brûlée!

When faced with murder Zoe keeps calm and helps picking up clues without running into danger. What made it even better was it didn't feel that Zoe was running into a brick wall with the police, the detective she worked with actually took what Zoe said to heart without it feeling like she was brushing Zoe off.

Added to the mix is the lawyer who tries to keep everyone on the ball and comes to help Zoe, Miguel Alexander, with a sad past and is feeling his way outside the courtroom and getting on with his life. The attraction between Zoe and Miguel is just full of potential that I'm looking forward to seeing their relationship growing and developing.

With each clue and red herring,the mystery built very nicely. I have to say I was a tad surprised and whodunit at the end, and even got a laugh when the true "mastermind" who started the whole fiasco got a taste of his own medicine without being truly left off the hook.

Fabulous start to a brand new series and another keeper from JJ Cook. Can't wait to see more from this series.

i never thought that chili could make such a huge difference and/or impact in a post-apocalyptic world.
i wish the story were stretched a bit further though. i wanted to savor more of its goodness!

Just picked this up on a whim, and it's a really fun book. Not sure how I feel about some of the recipes (a recipe for tater tots with sumac just called for frozen tater tots, prepared according to package instructions, and sumac--not really that innovative), but there's plenty of variety so I did find things I'd be excited to make at home. There were also a lot of photos, but some of them were repeated multiple times throughout the book, which was a little bit annoying--it's not like I'm not going to notice that I just saw that picture 20 pages ago.
The other fun part of the book, for people that are into more than pure cookbooks, is the stories of different food trucks and their proprietors, little notes on the history of street food, and a few city profiles (just big cities though). A good compendium of food truck lore and recipes as far as I'm concerned--can't wait to make something out of it.