A Study in Chocolate

Felicity Koerber’s bean to bar chocolate shop on Galveston’s historic Strand is expanding, as it has become a gathering spot for the community, despite having been the scene of multiple murders. Artists she met while doing a chocolate sculpture are now working out of the shop. So when Felicity is invited to tea by an eccentric art collector, she’s intrigued, especially when she gets asked to pose for a portrait done with chocolate on chocolate. Only, where there is a murder the next day at the same historic house where the tea was held, one of Felicity’s artist friends becomes the main suspect.

When the killer threatens that unless Felicity unravels the murder, one of her two love interests will be the next victim, she finds herself unwittingly at the center of a puzzle with a Sherlock Holmes-obsessed murderer who wants to be the next Moriarty – and wants to cast Felicity as Sherlock.

Felicity starts finding unexpected connections between her friends and acquaintances and must deal with the idea that someone who knows her is a murderer. At the same time, she has to keep her business running, despite construction dust and unruly customers – and an unexpected order for thousands of truffles.

Satchmo the retired police-dog-turned-therapy dog returns to help her sniff out a few clues, and the kidnapping of Ruffles, the quirky artist’s cat, helps lead Felicity into the puzzle. Can Felicity solve it in time to protect the people she cares about from becoming additional victims?

We Visited a Cacao Farm

Before I started writing the Bean to Bar Mysteries, I wrote a space-opera trilogy that supposed that chocolate was the most important thing Earth had to offer a hungry universe. (The Chocoverse Trilogy, Angry Robot Books.) While researching those books, my husband and I visited cacao plantations in The Dominican Republic, Mexico, and several other places, as well as chocolatiers and chocolate makers in every city we had an opportunity to visit. I learned so much – when I decided to do a cozy mystery series, having a craft chocolate maker sleuth was the obvious choice.

Jake and I still enjoy learning about chocolate and visiting with cacao farmers and chocolate professionals. On a recent trip to Hawaii, we were able to visit several cacao farms. One of them was 21 Degrees Estate, on Oahu. Cacao is supposed to grow in the band between 20 Degrees North and South of the Equator. So the very fact that cacao is thriving in Hawaii – which is located at 21 Degrees – is pretty special.

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