Heaven Preserve Us: A Home Crafting Mystery (A Home Crafting Mystery)
This is the second outing for Sophie Mae Reynolds in McRae’s Home Crafting series, set in small-town Washington State. After helping to solve the murder of her handyman in Lye in Wait (2007), Sophie Mae assumes she can go back to her normal occupation of making soap, bath salts, lip-balm lotion bars, saltea bags, air fresheners, wine jelly, pickles, and preserves—and perhaps even find time to volunteer at a crisis center. The next thing she knows, her boss at Heaven House is dead from food poisoning, and Sophie Mae is being stalked. To make matters worse, her boyfriend, detective Barr Ambrose, is also a victim of the food poisoning, fortunately not fatal in his case. McRae writes about characters that we really care about, and her plot is thoroughly credible. Like many popular cooking mystery series, the books also include recipes. Sophie Mae and her friends deserve many more adventures. --Judy Coon