The LaTisha Barnhart Mysteries Series, by S. Dionne Moore (Spyglass Lane Mysteries)
LaTisha Barnhart and her husband, Hardy, are a middle-aged black couple living in the fictional town of Maple Gap, Colorado. They’re still very much in love after almost 40 years, and the amount of sass they fling at one another to cover it up is funny.
Hardy has retired from the workforce, but as the series opens, LaTisha is fighting empty-nest syndrome by taking an online degree in police science. She quit her last job—or was she fired?—and when she finds her ex-boss murdered, she’s afraid she’ll be suspect number one. That’s book 1, Murder on the Ol’ Bunions.
Book 2, Polly Dent Loses Grip, takes place in a nearby town as the Barnharts try to get Hardy’s elderly mother settled into a retirement residence. Management dismisses an on-site death as accidental, but LaTisha sees murder in the mix. As well as Polly Dent (whose hands may have slipped on some powder), there are other amusing names in this book: Sue Mie is an angry young woman with attitude, and Thomas Philcher is rumoured to be a bank robber.
Your Goose is Cooked is book 3. LaTisha and Hardy are back in Maple Gap and they’re the new owners of a restaurant called “Your Goose is Cooked.” Their cook overhears a threat on the mayor’s life but is afraid to go to the police, leaving LaTisha to investigate. Add a murder and an attempted hit-and-run on LaTisha herself, throw in small-town rumours and an election campaign, and things get a bit wild.
This is a fun, light-hearted mystery series, and I recommend starting with book 1. The stories build on one another, from Murder on the Ol’ Bunions to Polly Dent Loses Grip to Your Goose is Cooked. They’re 99¢ each for Kindle and at Smashwords, so why not collect all three?
I won an e-copy of Your Goose is Cooked at Lena Nelson Dooley’s blog, A Christian Writer’s World, and liked it so much I bought books 1 and 2. The draw is over, but if you click here you can read an interview with S. Dionne Moore and an excerpt from book 1, Murder on the Ol’ Bunions.
S. Dionne Moore writes historical romance and cozy mysteries. To learn more about her and her books, visit her website. Your Goose is Cooked is only available in electronic format, but her previous books are in print as well as ebooks.