Vangie Vale & the Strangled Strudel (The Matchbaker Mysteries #3)

It is fire season in the Montana Mountains and as a newcomer, Vangie is feeling the tension in the air. For all her concerns, she never expected the danger to come from a murder connected to her bakery. While Vangie knows she didn’t do it, someone seems determined to make her pay for the death anyway. With suspicious activities around her store, the continued fire danger, and her friend Emma in trouble, Vangie has her hands full — especially with the ghosts of her past calling, and a killer on the loose threatening her business. With no end of trouble in sight, Vangie needs to find out who really committed the crime before she loses not only her bakery but her life as well. 

Another cozy addition to “The Matchbaker Mysteries” series, pastor and baker Vangie Vale takes on a murder. In her usual bumbling and haphazard way, Vangie investigates the crime that will keep the reader amused and interested from beginning to end while her relationships continue without change from the second book, with a love triangle tensions simmering in the air.  Although the plot and characters lack development, and the uneven pace launches the reader from neutral to sixty in a moment, details surrounding the crime that got Vangie exiled to Montana in the first place are coming to light in this book which seems to be leading to a big reveal in book four. Overall, this is a solid middle of the series cozy mystery with more to come.

Sarah E Bradley