Our Book Review of Smugglers and Scones

Author Morgan C. Talbot offers up a smart, smirky cozy mystery in Smugglers & Scones. As mysteries go, I tend more towards hard-boiled fare, but sometimes change is good. In this case, the change was very good! I honestly didn’t want to put my Kindle Fire down.

This is a first-person affair with Oregon Coast bed-and-breakfast queen Pippa Winterbourne running the show in Moorehaven. Well, at least when Rex and Svetlana, her feline fans, aren’t in charge.

I’ve spent time in Oregon, and my visits were always blanketed with fog and buffeted with cold. Probably nothing has changed. In Scones, Pippa’s business location is the former home of a world-famous mystery writer, and her guests arrive daily to wallow in writers’ block or finish their little darlings and get the pages off to their publishers. That sounds fine for me. Might as well be inside writing if the weather’s a bit blocky outside.

Of course I wouldn’t have kept reading without that tricky murder and the clues leading a call-back to Prohibition days. Yeah, there’s plenty here to keep you reading, and pondering what’s up next as you reach the end of each chapter. Really an enjoyable read.

Four Stars