Cool Cache: A Tucker Sinclair Mystery (Thorndike Press Large Print Mystery Series) - Hardcover

Patricia Smiley participates in the mystery author blog nakedauthors.com with such mystery authors as Cornelia Read and Jacqueline Winspear.

Death and chocolate in Beverly Hills sounds like a delicious way to die, but it's an unfortunate combo for Lupe Ortiz, a Latina cleaning lady, in Smiley's appealing fourth Tucker Sinclair sleuthfest (after 2007's Short Change). Tucker, a marketing expert, finds Lupe's body in the bathroom of Nectar, a new gourmet chocolate shop owned by a client of Tucker's. A quetzal feather left by the corpse, a signature of the MayaBoyz, points to Lupe's son Roberto, who belongs to the East L.A. gang, as the prime suspect. Doubtful of Roberto's guilt, Tucker asks her PI friend, Charley Tate, to investigate. Her overeager assistant, Eugene Barstok, also gets involved, but causes dismay when he disappears while undercover. Smiley fills this chocolate-enriched puzzler with touristy L.A. intel, while Tucker's no-nonsense first-person narration keeps the pages turning despite a predictable ending. (June)
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