Hannah Swensen is owner and operator and cook in her “Cookie Jar” store. She makes the best and biggest variety of cookies, sweet bars, fancy candy and other new inventions in Eden, Minnesota. As great a cookie cook as she is Hannah is an even better investigator. In this adventure Hannah finds she has to clear a friend who is the primary suspect in the murder of a sleazy businessman in Eden right before Christmas.
Larry Jaeger runs the “Crazy Elf” which is a Christmas tree lot with attitude. On his lot there is very loud Christmas music all the time to entertain people as they ride on the reindeer Farris wheel and the Looping Log and other rides or shop in the gift shop for handmade stuffed animals, toys from China, and Christmas tree decorations, or stop by the snack shop to buy crazy drinks (or some of Hannah’s cookies that are there on sale).
Business is booming when Hannah and her friends visit there to deliver some more cookies and get an increased order but some of the investors, including the Eden Mayor, have learned that the place is not making any money. When Hannah and her boyfriend, Norman, go out to visit one night after closing to pick up the payment for Hannah’s cookies they find Larry dead on the floor of his trailer office. He was shot once through the heart and his big screen TV was shot three times.
The friend of a friend Hannah learns was Larry’s ex-wife of 15 years separation. She had not been able to find Larry after he ran off with another woman and had no contact with him for 15 years. Since he ran off taking all the furniture from their apartment and all the money in their bank account she seems to have the best motive for doing him in. She also does not have an alibi for the time that Larry was killed. But, Hannah does not believe she did it.
In tracking down all the clues Hannah finds that Larry was cooking the books pocketing lots of cash that he made by inflating receipts that were signed by people with whom he did business without the amounts being filled in. Even Hannah was victim of the “I’ll fill in the details later” scheme.
Hannah eventually finds that a college professor is the daughter of a man who committed suicide after Larry had bilked him of his whole life savings. In the end Hannah is almost murdered herself but is rescued in the nick of time and we get sit down to a wonderful Christmas dinner with her and her friends at the end.
“Plum Pudding Murder” is a warm fireside mystery book that is great for Christmas reading. It gets an 8 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
