First in the Maggie Thorsen Mystery series. If you enjoy the Cleo Coyle Coffeehouse series or Janet Evanovich you’ll enjoy this one too.

Maggy Thorsen needs to jumpstart her life since her dentist husband left with his hygienist and when she and her two good friends decide to open up a coffee bar thing seem to be moving in the right direction. That is until opening day when she finds one of their trio dead on the floor in front of the espresso machine.

Determined to find out what happened Maggy can’t help herself but to jump right on in and investigate on her own. Little did she know of what was going on in her own small town. People and situations aren’t what they seem, the story moves rapidly and you are quickly flipping the pages wondering what Maggy could possibly get herself into next.

You’ll love Maggy’s sense of humor, but then again, how could you not when she explains her four basic food groups – Fat, Salt, Alcohol and Aerosol – the spray cheese kind.

Amazon Review: Can’t wait for book #2 http://tinyurl.com/23pj8c

Nothing marks opening day at a chic new gourmet coffee shop like an espresso machine rigged for death. When Patricia Harper, one of the three owners of Uncommon Grounds, is electrocuted while frothing the first latte, it's up to partner and coffee maven Maggy Thorsen to keep the java flowing before her new venture comes to a grinding halt.

The victim led a picture-perfect life until Maggy discovers it was all a perfect lie. For one, Patricia's affair with the building inspector opens a strange little box of secrets among the well-to-do suburbanites. When the killer strikes again, this time by more conventional means, Maggy digs deep to unravel the dirtiest, nastiest secrets of them all in a town where some people are not who they pretend to be--and one of them is a killer.

This is the first in a new series. I enjoyed the plot, found the characters likable and look forward to reading the next book.

DEATH BY FROTHING

Nothing marks opening day at a chic new gourmet coffee shop like an espresso machine rigged for death. When Patricia Harper, one of the three owners of Uncommon Grounds, is electrocuted while frothing the first latte, it's up to partner and coffee maven Maggy Thorsen to keep the java flowing before her new venture comes to a grinding halt.

The victim led a picture-perfect life until Maggy discovers it was all a perfect lie. For one, Patricia's affair with the building inspector opens a strange little box of secrets among the well-to-do suburbanites. When the killer strikes again, this time by more conventional means, Maggy digs deep to unravel the dirtiest, nastiest secrets of them all in a town where some people are not who they pretend to be--and one of them is a killer.

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#1 Maggy Thorsen mystery set in Brookhills, Wisconsin. Maggy and her business partners Caron and Patricia are set to open their new coffee shop, Uncommon Grounds, in a strip mall in suburban Brookhills. Maggy, late on her first day, opens the door only to find Patricia collapsed on the floor, a pitcher of milk spilled around her. At first it appears to be some sort of natural event but it's later determined that the espresso machine was interfered with and that Patricia was deliberately electrocuted. Although Patricia could be a bit intense and overbearing, Maggy can't think why anyone would want to kill her--until some previously unknown facts about her come to light, and Maggy realizes how little she really knew Patricia. Then the suspect list begins to burgeon, though the new sheriff in town, Jake Pavlik, seems to be happy with the easiest result. Gary Donovan, the town's chief of police and long time friend of Maggy, helps her mull over possibilities--she just doesn't believe that Patricia's husband David is capable of murder as everyone seems to think--but when he turns up dead of an apparent suicide, she begins to wonder.

I had a vague inkling about the bad guy early on but wasn't sure til about two-thirds of the way through. I enjoyed the book quite a lot more than I expected, as I've had a pretty low opinion of most "themed" cozy series I've tried lately--to the point where I haven't bothered finishing most of them. But this has a little harder edge to it than your "typical" cozy mystery, and I liked Maggy a lot--she seemed to be a very "real" person with some depth of character--and not an annoying one!--and her supporting cast is also coming along nicely.

I found a few bloopers (wrong form of a word used, wrong character name, etc) which threw me off guard a bit, and Maggy did admittedly suffer from that old 'amateur sleuth' curse where she does dumb things like withholding evidence and investigating dangerous things on her own....but that almost seems de rigeur these days. I'm glad to have found a cozy series that I'm actually looking forward to carrying on with.

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