French Pressed: A Coffeehouse Mystery

by: Cleo Coyle

Published by: Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Group

Reviewed by Kathy Perschmann

This is the sixth in Coyle’s clever and well-written series featuring Clare Corsi, the manager of the Village Blend coffeehouse in New York City.

Clare runs the coffeehouse along with her ex-husband Matt Allegro, who is often away on long trips buying coffee. Their daughter Joy is a culinary school graduate, now interning at the prestigious Solange. Clare has met Joy’s boss, head chef Tommy Keitel, a conceited but talented womanizer many years her senior. Clare is eating at Solange one night, and when she goes to the kitchen to visit Joy, she witnesses Tommy’s assistant Brigitte, screaming at the staff. She rescues Joy from a knife-wielding Brigitte, who then disappears, running out the door.

Later Joy checks on sick co-worker Vinny, who she finds stabbed to death in his apartment. There are plenty of possible suspects, but the police like Joy for the murder. They let her go, but Clare swears to investigate on her own and goes to Solange to pitch her own superior coffee blends as a way to hang around and question the staff.

Clare had been shocked to discover that Tommy and Joy are having an affair, and she has been trying to talk some sense into her daughter, but to no avail. Tommy vows to break up with Joy, and Clare is appeased, but he dumps her in a very nasty way. Joy flees in tears to her grandmother’s apartment. Late that night she returns to Solange to get her knives, and when Clare hears where she is going, she dashes there as well. Clare arrives just in time to hear Joy’s scream when she discovers a second body with a knife in the neck, just like Vinny. Now the cops arrest Joy, and won’t listen to Clare’s list of possible other suspects, starting with Brigitte, the crazy drug-addled chef fired the day before. Clare decides to investigate since the police aren’t–and Clare enlists her boyfriend Mike Quinn, a police detective.

Clare and Mike make a great team, in more ways than one.

Armchair Interviews says: Another great addition to this series.

Author’s Web site: http://www.CoffeehouseMyster