Murder by Mocha (Coffeehouse Mystery Series #10)

by Cleo Coyle

Overview

Clare Cosi, manager and head barista of the landmark Village Blend coffeehouse, can brew a beverage to die for. But can she stir up some evidence against a bitter killer who’s gone loco for mocha?
Clare’s Village Blend beans are being used to create a new java love potion: a “Mocha Magic Coffee” billed as an aphrodisiac. Clare may even try some on her boyfriend, NYPD detective Mike Quinn—when he’s off duty, of course…

The product, expected to rake in millions, will be sold exclusively on Aphrodite’s Village, one of the Web’s most popular online communities for women. But the launch party ends on a sour note when one of the Website’s editors is found dead.

When more of the Website’s Sisters of Aphrodite start to die, Clare is convinced someone wants the coffee’s secret formula—and is willing to kill to get it. Clare isn’t about to spill the beans, but will she be next on the hit list? Includes recipes and coffee-making tips!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425255360
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/07/2012
Series:	Coffeehouse Mystery Series , #10
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

CLEO COYLE is a pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, writing in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini. Both are New York Times bestselling authors of The Coffeehouse Mysteries, now celebrating over ten years in print. Alice and Marc are also bestselling media tie-in writers who have penned properties for Lucasfilm, NBC, Fox, Disney, Imagine, and MGM. They live and work in New York City, where they write independently and together, including the nationally bestselling Haunted Bookshop Mysteries.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"What a pleasure to read a book by this author." —Portland Book Review

Editorial Reviews

"Coyle's Coffeehouse books are superb." —Library Journal (starred review)

"Clare and company are some of the most vibrant characters I've ever read." —Mystery Scene Magazine

"What a pleasure to read a book by this author." —Portland Book Review

From the Publisher

La vita is definitely dolce these days for feisty Clare Cosi in Coyle's 10th coffeehouse mystery (after 2010's Roast Mortem): she has an exquisitely furnished, rent-free duplex above Village Blend, the Greenwich Village coffee shop she manages for her former mother-in-law; steamy amore with NYPD detective Mike Quinn; even a lucrative deal to use some of her Village Blend beans in Mocha Magic, a new love potion being pitched to women by a Web powerhouse, Aphrodite's Village. Of course, there's trenta-sized trouble brewing. Indeed, the Mocha Magic launch gala turns into a crime scene with Clare's discovery of a slain Aphrodite's Village exec. She soon finds a second murder victim—and herself in the line of fire. Until the pseudonymous Coyle (the wife-husband writing team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini) starts stirring in too many subplots, this is a tasty espresso-dark tale of multigenerational crime and punishment lightened by the Blend's frothy cast of lovable eccentrics. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Can a coffee concoction touted as a love potion be the reason the website editors for the Sisters of Aphrodite are being killed? This is taking "coffee to die for" too far, thinks Clare in her tenth outing (Roast Mortem).

Library Journal

Mocha may be the inspiration for a series of murders.

Even though Clare Cosi is long divorced from Matt Allegro, she still works for Madame, his mother, running the Village Blend coffee shop and living over the store. But she doesn't usually have to work so hard to earn her overtime. While she's spending some quality time with her policeman lover Mike Quinn, Madame phones and orders her to rush over to the New York hotel where her old friend Alicia has awakened to find a blood-soaked corpse in bed with her. The cops Clare calls, however, arrive to find a room stripped of all clues, including any trace of a body. When she's not sleeping with the dead, Alicia is promoting her new Mocha Magic coffee, which she claims contains an herbal aphrodisiac. Clare is concerned because the Village Blend is providing the beans and she and her staff are offering up the brew along with some chocolate treats at several publicity parties. The new formula is being introduced by the enigmatic Aphrodite, whose entire female staff fiercely compete to rise in her organization. When the first party brings another murder along with the treats, Clare continues to probe despite her worries about her daughter, who's just returned from France, and Mike, who's involved in a nasty case of police corruption.

An overly busy plot keeps this from being the best of Coyle's coffeehouse mysteries (Holiday Grind,2009, etc.). But foodies will doubtless enjoy the appended recipes.

Kirkus Reviews