Murder by Mocha (Coffeehouse Mystery Series #10)

by Cleo Coyle

Overview

The national bestselling author of Roast Mortem serves readers a fresh Coffeehouse mystery.
Clare's Village Blend coffee beans are being used to create a new java love potion: a "Mocha Magic Coffee," billed as an aphrodisiac. The product, expected to rake in millions, will be sold exclusively on Aphrodite's Village, one of the most popular online communities for women.

But at its launch, one of the website's editors is murdered. Clare is convinced a bitter killer wants the secret formula. Can she catch who's gone loco for mocha?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101517376
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/02/2011
Series:	Coffeehouse Mystery Series , #10
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	101,708
File size:	409 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

CLEO COYLE is a pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, writing in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini. Both are New York Times bestselling authors of The Coffeehouse Mysteries, now celebrating over ten years in print. Alice and Marc are also bestselling media tie-in writers who have penned properties for Lucasfilm, NBC, Fox, Disney, Imagine, and MGM. They live and work in New York City, where they write independently and together, including the nationally bestselling Haunted Bookshop Mysteries.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"What a pleasure to read a book by this author." —Portland Book Review

Editorial Reviews

La vita is definitely dolce these days for feisty Clare Cosi in Coyle's 10th coffeehouse mystery (after 2010's Roast Mortem): she has an exquisitely furnished, rent-free duplex above Village Blend, the Greenwich Village coffee shop she manages for her former mother-in-law; steamy amore with NYPD detective Mike Quinn; even a lucrative deal to use some of her Village Blend beans in Mocha Magic, a new love potion being pitched to women by a Web powerhouse, Aphrodite's Village. Of course, there's trenta-sized trouble brewing. Indeed, the Mocha Magic launch gala turns into a crime scene with Clare's discovery of a slain Aphrodite's Village exec. She soon finds a second murder victim—and herself in the line of fire. Until the pseudonymous Coyle (the wife-husband writing team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini) starts stirring in too many subplots, this is a tasty espresso-dark tale of multigenerational crime and punishment lightened by the Blend's frothy cast of lovable eccentrics. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Coyle's Coffeehouse books are superb." —Library Journal (starred review)

"Clare and company are some of the most vibrant characters I've ever read." —Mystery Scene Magazine

"What a pleasure to read a book by this author." —Portland Book Review

From the Publisher

Can a coffee concoction touted as a love potion be the reason the website editors for the Sisters of Aphrodite are being killed? This is taking "coffee to die for" too far, thinks Clare in her tenth outing (Roast Mortem).

Library Journal

Mocha may be the inspiration for a series of murders.

Even though Clare Cosi is long divorced from Matt Allegro, she still works for Madame, his mother, running the Village Blend coffee shop and living over the store. But she doesn't usually have to work so hard to earn her overtime. While she's spending some quality time with her policeman lover Mike Quinn, Madame phones and orders her to rush over to the New York hotel where her old friend Alicia has awakened to find a blood-soaked corpse in bed with her. The cops Clare calls, however, arrive to find a room stripped of all clues, including any trace of a body. When she's not sleeping with the dead, Alicia is promoting her new Mocha Magic coffee, which she claims contains an herbal aphrodisiac. Clare is concerned because the Village Blend is providing the beans and she and her staff are offering up the brew along with some chocolate treats at several publicity parties. The new formula is being introduced by the enigmatic Aphrodite, whose entire female staff fiercely compete to rise in her organization. When the first party brings another murder along with the treats, Clare continues to probe despite her worries about her daughter, who's just returned from France, and Mike, who's involved in a nasty case of police corruption.

An overly busy plot keeps this from being the best of Coyle's coffeehouse mysteries (Holiday Grind,2009, etc.). But foodies will doubtless enjoy the appended recipes.

Kirkus Reviews