Pies and Prejudice
Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery #1
Ellery Adams

Berkley Prime Crime
July 2012/ 978-0-425-25140-9
Mystery/Cozy/Paranormal
Amazon

Reviewed by Laura Hinds

As a longtime reader of cozy mysteries, I've watched as themes of craft based mysteries, such as knitting or other needlework take off in popularity. Equally popular themes are cooking, animals, gardening, and antiquing. Yet recently, the cozy mystery world has embraced the union of baking and magic. How fun!

I previously reviewed Brownies and Broomsticks, by Bailey Cates and loved it, and Pies and Prejudice seems to fit right into the theme of magical baking. I eagerly awaited the arrival of Pies and Prejudice, by Ellery Adams. Ellery Adams writes under the pen names J B Stanley and Jennifer Stanley as well. Since I've read most of her other mysteries, I was confident that the new Charmed Pie Shoppe series would be fun to read too.

Ella Mae LeFaye is the protagonist, and boy does she love to bake. When her cheating husband is caught, she realizes it is time for a change. She moves back home to Havenwood, Georgia, ready to bake that man right out of her system. Ella Mae quickly learns that her mouth-watering pies also effect those who devour them in a magical fashion…including an eighty year old man who takes to turning cartwheels in the street!

Ella Mae's rival, Loralyn Gaynor, stirs the pot with her own discontent, and when Loralyn's fiancé, Bradford Knox, is murdered, it appears as though Ella Mae has some explaining to do: her rolling pin was the murder weapon! Aside from the murder, there is intrigue galore and even a look into the darker side of horse racing.

The Southern setting of Georgia is comfortable, and the supporting cast of characters, including her aunts, mother and friend, Reba, fit like a comfortable pair of jeans. The mystery is rather straight forward and not overly fussy. However, Adams seems to have developed a penchant for providing overly detailed descriptions of far too many things. This is not something I've noticed in any of her other works, and hopefully this is just a case of a freshman effort in a new series with so many details vivid in her thought-process that they ended up used too frequently.

Overall, fans of Ellery Adams should give this book a go. It is an interesting mystery, and if my hunches about it are right, the series will grow into itself and become fabulous.