It’s a cold January in the Chesapeake Bay area, but Cool Down Cafe manager Val Deniston has plenty to sweat over–like catering a book club event, testing recipes for her Granddad’s cookbook, and catching the author of a deadly tale of murder. . .

The last thing Val needs in her life is an unsolved murder, especially when the victim, an actor famed for impersonating Edgar

Allan Poe, happens to be dressed exactly like her Granddad. To keep an eye on Granddad, whose latest job takes him to the home of Rick Usher, a local author inspired by Poe, Val gets herself hired as acook in Rick’s House of Usher. When she discovers the actor wasn’t the only one doing an impersonation, separating the innocent from the murderous becomes a real-life horror story. But Val must decipher a killer’s M.O. sooner rather than later . . . or she can forget about finding poetic justice in The Tell-Tale Tarte. (via Goodreads)

I received an eARC courtesy of the publisher, Kensington, and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a sucker for a good cozy mystery – they feed my desires for mysteries without being too graphic for my tastes. This fit that bill, but wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

This was the first of Maya Corrigan’s books for me, and I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read the other three books. It’s fine as a stand alone, but I think it would have been a lot better if I had read the others.

The Tell-Tale Tarte, as you can probably guess by the title is very Poe-themed for a cozy mystery. Frankly, there was way too much going on in this book for its 300 page length.I think there were a lot of things that were just unnecessary, or could have been expanded on, which is why this was a three star review for me.