A Deadly Proof: A Crumb & Compass Cozy Mystery
The wedding of the decade is days away, and the baker has vanished, leaving a mixer running and an invoice that does not add up.
You want a mystery as comforting as a warm kitchen and as clever as a well-kept ledger. But a cozy that plays fair with its clues, and still leaves you smiling, is harder to find than it should be.
Keep scrolling, and you risk another evening with a story that cheats in the last chapter or never makes you care who did it. You would also miss a small-town wedding where everyone is keeping a promise they would rather not, a heroine who spots a false number the way other people spot a typo, and clues set down in plain sight.
A Deadly Proof is Book 2 of the Crumb & Compass Mysteries, a clean cozy mystery set in the harbor town of Larkspur Cove, Maine.
Clementine "Clem" Ashworth spent twelve years as a Boston forensic accountant before she inherited her grandmother Eleanor's bakery, and she has retired from other people's numbers. Then the biggest wedding in Larkspur Cove loses its baker. Bianca Lowell, the Portland cake artist hired to build a seven-tier showpiece for the bride, Tessa Bellamy, has disappeared, leaving a bowl of ruined buttercream in a kitchen where the mixer is still running.
The bride is in tears, the town is taking sides, and Clem makes the only promise she can: she cannot promise the cake Bianca would have made, but she can promise a cake. To keep her word, and to learn what became of Bianca, she follows the numbers. They lead through a father with a failing boatyard, a wedding planner whose accounts are suspiciously perfect, a groom with a secret box, a florist with a grudge, and a nineteen-year-old line cook who will not say where he was on Monday night.
Chief Nate Reyes would prefer a quieter town. Crumb, a one-eared tabby, stops at the mouth of the alley and will not go near the kitchen. And in baking, as in bookkeeping, there is always a proof.
Inside you will find:
A Cast of Suspects and eight Clue Boards, so you can play alongTwelve recipes from Larkspur Cove's kitchens, from Eleanor's almond wedding cookies to a lighthouse wedding cakeA clean read: no profanity, no graphic violence, and a slow-burn romance (hand-holding and a single dance)A warm first-person voice, a satisfying ending in which the culprit is unmasked, and a hint of what comes nextEach book solves its own case, so you can start here, but Clem's life in Larkspur Cove grows from one story to the next, and Book 1, Crumbs of Doubt, is where it begins.
Who made the baker vanish? Scroll up and click Buy Now to step back into Larkspur Cove, and bring an appetite.
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