Shot in the Dark

February 5, 2018
In Coyle’s well-crafted 17th Coffeehouse mystery (after 2017’s Dead Cold Brew), the Village Blend, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse, is doing a booming business, thanks to being listed as a great place to meet up with potential dates on a hot new dating app. One evening, a young woman brandishing a gun charges up to the coffeehouse’s lounge and threatens the life of a man whom she met through the app. Shots are fired, and the whole incident is captured on at least a dozen phones. Clare Cosi, the Village Blend’s manager, later goes to meet her former mother-in-law for a late dinner at a waterfront restaurant, where Clare discovers the body of a regular Village Blend customer floating in the river. Could the two incidents be connected? Coyle (the husband-and-wife team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini) serves up some tantalizing descriptions of the scents and flavors of coffee and assorted edibles, as well as musings on the dating scene in the digital age. This entry is sure to delight old fans and garner new ones. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune.

February 15, 2018
A coffeehouse manager gets a crash course in the rules of the new dating game.As she seeks an affordable venue for her wedding to NYPD detective Mike Quinn, Clare Cosi must juggle her duties as manager of the vastly popular Village Blend. Still on good terms with her handsome, charming ex-husband, Matteo Allegro, she's surprised as they chat to see him using the dating app Cinder, where he's apparently hooking up with plenty of women. Suddenly shots ring out, turning Clare's life upside-down. Upstairs, a young woman is threatening a man she met on Cinder who treated her badly. Clare manages to get the gun, that turns out to be loaded with blanks, away from the woman before the cops arrive. But the videos patrons took quickly go viral and ruin her business. As it turns out, the threatened man, who identifies himself as Richard Crest, has quite a reputation for playing nasty games with his hookups. Later that night, Clare gets a call for help from Madame, her tipsy former mother-in-law and owner of the Village Blend, who asks Clare to join her at a trendy riverfront restaurant. On her way out, Clare discovers a dead woman floating in the river. Worse yet, Clare recognizes her as a Village Blend customer. Clare's reluctant agreement to go along with the Cinder founder's plan to revive both her brand and Cinder's brings her into contact with many more people involved in the lucrative world of dating apps. With plenty of time on her hands, Clare, who has quite the reputation as a sleuth (Dead Cold Brew, 2017, etc.), decides to investigate the elusive Crest and the online dating scene by setting up her own Cinder account to lure Crest into a meeting--a plan that quickly becomes hazardous to her own health.A complicated murder mystery with some penetrating insights into the treacherous world of dating apps and throwaway relationships.

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Starred review from March 1, 2018

Thanks to a smartphone dating app called Cinder, the Greenwich Village coffee shop managed by Clare Cosi has become a hot meet-up spot until a customer is arrested for threatening a former date. When the drama goes viral on social media, Clare worries not only about her business but also about the people involved, including her ex-husband. When she recognizes a murder victim as a customer, her concerns seem justified. With help from her employees, former mother-in-law, and daughter, Clare attempts to link the killer and victim to the dating app and discovers the cops are working the case from a drug angle. VERDICT In her 17th series entry (after Cold Dead Brew), Coyle, the pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi writing with husband Marc Cerasini, combines timely social issues (dating apps, designer opioids) with a gripping and entertaining mystery that features an appealing cast of supportive and loving family members and coworkers. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/17.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018

Smartphone-swiping folks hook up for coffee and then some at the Village Blend, where manager Clare Cosi just keeps pouring until someone lies dead. A dating app maniac, the victim dumped a lot of people along the way, but Clare doubts that one of them is the culprit. Over a million copies of this series are out there.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.