Book Review: Honey-Baked Homicide

I love picking up books in the middle of a series. The writer should have hit their stride by about book 3. Honey-Baked Homicide is book 3 in Gayle Leeson’s A Down South Cafe Murder series.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Goodreads):

It’s fall in Winter Garden, Virginia, and business at Amy Flowers’ Down South Cafe has never been better. So when struggling beekeeper Stuart Landon asks Amy to sell some of his honey, she’s happy to help. The jars of honey are a sweet success, but their partnership is cut short when Amy discovers Landon’s body outside the cafe early one morning.
As Amy tries to figure out who could possibly have wanted to harm the unassuming beekeeper, she discovers an ever-expanding list of suspects–and they’re all buzzing mad. She’ll have to use all of her skills–and her Southern charm–to find her way out of this sticky situation…

My thoughts:

My mind is almost blank on this one. I read it while away last weekend, plane read. Would I have finished it if I hadn’t been trapped for a couple of hours in a middle seat with my eight year old next to me? Maybe. This book floats along. Nothing much tripped me up, although the constant explanation of what food she was cooking got a bit much. Here a week later, I look at the book and think, eh. It was fine. Just fine. I wasn’t grabbed by the main character. And the murderer was unexpected. But the main character didn’t solve the crime so much as get herself almost murdered by the killer, who came as a surprise to the “detective” main character. I like my books to have a possibility of solving the case.  This one didn’t.