cover image Dead Cold Brew: A Coffeehouse Mystery

Dead Cold Brew: A Coffeehouse Mystery

Cleo Coyle. Berkley Prime Crime, $27 (368p) ISBN 978-0-425-27611-2

A murder aboard the Andrea Doria, after the doomed luxury liner’s collision with another ship off the coast of Nantucket in 1956, propels Coyle’s satisfying 16th Coffeehouse mystery (after 2015’s Dead to the Last Drop). Flash forward 60 years. Clare Cosi, the manager of the Village Blend, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse, which she runs with her ex-husband, Matteo Allegro, is the only witness to get a look at a sniper who has been picking off New York City cops. Unfortunately, to Clare the shooter looked exactly like the cartoon superhero Panther Man—complete with cape and pointy ears. Will her policeman boyfriend, Mike Quinn, think she’s lost her mind? The plot’s blend includes a fabulous diamond, blackmail, embezzlement, surprise inheritances, murder, and a decades-old family scandal. Along with this spicy mix, the reader gets a generous helping of coffee lore and over a dozen lusciously rich recipes. Coyle is the pseudonym for the husband-and-wife team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini. [em]Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune. (Jan.) [/em]