Coconut Layer Cake Murder

Hannah Swensen runs a bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota, and is in California helping a friend when a phone call cuts the trip short. Her sister Michelle's boyfriend, Detective Lonnie Murphy, is the prime suspect in a murder. Hannah leaves a movie studio sound stage and heads straight for the Los Angeles airport.

She returns to a freezing Minnesota winter. Lonnie remembers only fragments of the night in question. He went to a local bar and drove a badly impaired woman home, then helped her into her bedroom. His next memory is waking on her couch the following morning.

When he went to check on the woman, he found her dead. Clearing a man who cannot recall what he did is a hard task, and Hannah is not sure what to believe.

The official help she might have counted on is gone. Lonnie's brother, Detective Rick Murphy, and his partner, Chief Detective Mike Kingston, have both been taken off the case.

Hannah has to gather enough clues on her own to find the killer before the case closes in on Lonnie. A baker's eye for what went wrong in a recipe is the skill she brings to the problem. This is a cozy mystery with a small-town Minnesota setting and a wintry backdrop.