Book of the Week: Dark Tort

After breaking the rules last week with a book I finished on Monday, I’m breaking a different rule this week and writing about a book that’s later in a series. But it’s ok. I can explain.

This is the thirteenth in the Goldy Schulz series and sees our heroine taking on a catering contract for a local law firm. One of the staff at the firm is Dusty, a friend and neighbour who has recently started working at the law office and who has asked Goldy for cooking lessons. But when Goldy arrives at the office to prep the next day’s breakfast meeting food, she finds Dusty dead on the office floor. Of course she can’t help but start investigating – especially when the victim’s mother asks Goldy to because she doesn’t trust the police. It turns out that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes at the law firm – and plenty of options for Dusty’s killer. But can Goldy avoid the killer’s attentions herself?

What I like about this series – apart from Goldy herself and I’ll come back to that – is the way that Mott Davidson uses the catering business to find new and interesting settings for the murders that Goldy gets caught up in. This means that there are always new characters coming through (so your old favourites don’t get killed or turn into killers) and helps combat the “how does this business stay open with all these murders” issue of so many small business cozies. And Goldy is such an appealing character – and she’s so consistently herself too. I’ve read all bar two of the series now and although her life has changed and improved, she’s still recognisable as the same person as the first book and that’s not always the case – especially when a series has been written across a long period of time.

This is an older cozy crime series (the first one Catering to Nobody came out in 1990!) and in my series post a year ago I said that it was tough to get hold of some of them because they’re not all in ebooks. But much to my delight since that post (and since I ordered a second hand copy of Dark Tort and sighed sadly over the cost of the others second hand) the rest of the series has not only appeared as ebooks but is currently in Kindle Unlimited. Meaning that I could read this on KU while away from home and still get a book off the pile! And of course it means that it’s easier for the rest of you to get hold of it too now. Three cheers all around.

Happy Reading!