The traditional cozies-think death by knitting needle – have changed with the times while remaining true their light-hearted spriit.

 “I specialize,” Agatha Christie once said, “in murders of quiet, domestic interest.” Today, almost 90 years after the publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first novel featuring the fastidious Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, the traditional mystery still thrives. Readers continue to crave the classic whodunit, a puzzle they try to solve along with the protagonist, who may be a professional like Poirot or an amateur sleuth like Miss Jane Marple, one of Christie’s other creations.(Publisher’s Weekly, May 4, Jordan Foster)

Violence is never absent from these tales—they are, after all, murder mysteries—but there’s a definite lack of gore and gratuitous carnage. Louise Penny, whose award-winning Chief Insp. Armand Gamache series is set in the tiny Quebec village of Three Pines, likens the suspense in her novels to that of famed director Alfred Hitchcock, who “knew that less is more.” Says Penny, “My books aren’t about murder—that’s simply a catalyst to look at human nature. They aren’t about blood but about the marrow, about what happens deep inside, in places we didn’t even (more…)

Talk about suffering for one’s art.  Before writing a new novel, Davidson volunteers to help a local caterer with an event she wants to feature in that book.  For Fatally Flaky (copies in print: 250,000), she worked a wedding’s “hot line” – the area of the kitchen where food is plated before being picked up by the wait staff.  After standing in a hot kitchen for hours saucing some 300 plates of filet mignon and shrimp, she ended up with severe back pain and had to see an osteopath.

Order your signed copy of Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson at www.vjbooks.com

(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 23)

Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz doesn’t have a moment to spare as she frantically tries to pull everything together for two upcoming wedding receptions, including last-minute venue and menu changes from a spoiled bridezilla, in bestseller Davidson’s entertaining 15th culinary suspense novel (after Sweet Revenge). When Harold “Doc” Finn, Aspen Meadow’s beloved retired doctor, dies under mysterious circumstances on his way to the first wedding ceremony, Goldy wonders if it was an accident or murder. When her godfather and Doc Finn’s good friend, Jack Carmichael, is also attacked, it’s obvious that Goldy will have to venture out of the kitchen and put her detecting skills to use once again. Stir in a slimy spa owner, rumors of a malpractice suit and the usual cast of supporting characters—including Goldy’s patient cop husband, Tom, and her capable culinary assistant, Julian Teller—and you’ve got another winning entry in Davidson’s mouthwatering series. 6-city author tour. (Apr.)

Order your signed copy of Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson from www.vjbooks.com