Baking Bad (Beaufort Scales #1) by Kim M. Watt

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Cozy Mystery
Content: Clean

 

A tranquil village.

A poisoned cupcake.

A murdered vicar.

A simple case - or it should be. But all clues point to the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute, and Detective Inspector Adams is about to discover there’s much more to the W.I. than bake sales and jam making.

Alice Martin, RAF Wing Commander (Ret.), and current chair of the W.I., knows the ladies of the Women’s Institute are not guilty. But she has a bigger problem. Toot Hansell has a dragonish secret, and she needs to keep the police well away from it. And she’d really rather not be arrested for murder. Again.

Meanwhile, Beaufort Scales, High Lord of the Cloverly dragons and survivor of the days of knights and dragon hunts, knows even better than Alice that the modern dragon only survives as long as no one knows they exist. But he also knows friends don’t let friends face murder inquiries alone. Beaufort fully intends to Get Involved.

This investigation is about to take on dragonish proportions.

Best put the kettle on.

A funny cozy mystery (with dragons), for anyone that likes their mysteries gentle and well-stocked with cake, tea, and friendship. And dragons, obviously.

 

This was a cute cozy mystery. I enjoyed the characters more than the mystery itself, as I thought the mystery dragged a bit at times, and there were not enough clues dropped for the reader. It did end up being pretty predictable though. This was an interesting combination of cozy mystery and fantasy with dragons that are the size of large dogs. I thought they were rather underwhelming as such, and not at all what I was expecting. However, I did enjoy the way the dragons were rather chameleon-like and able to hide from everyone except for the people who knew about them. I also found it pretty amusing the way they bumbled their way through solving the mystery. Pretty much everyone in the book did that, humans and dragon alike.

Overall, I'm not a huge cozy mystery fan. I enjoy the Hercule Poirot books that some people categorize as cozy, but those are not the same type of cozy mystery as these. These are in the category of light fluff that doesn't require much thinking, with a lot of silliness added in. The silliness is what makes it fun and amusing to read. However, I rarely am able to stick with a series like this for more than three books before it gets old, so we'll see how long I last with this one. I'm going to read book two this month.