Devil's Kiss

A Small Batch Mystery, Book 1

De: Michelle Bennington

Narrado por: Courtney Patterson

Rook Campbell is broke, divorced, jobless, and in desperate need of steady employment, which is hard to come by in the small town of Rothdale, Kentucky. With the help of her friend and neighbor Bryan, she lands a good job at the Four Wild Horses Distillery and meets an attractive coworker with lots of dating potential. Her life is finally headed in the right direction until a coworker dies under suspicious circumstances and a shipment of rare small-batch bourbon goes missing. Worse, her personal life begins to unravel as her beloved grandmother falls ill. Normally she can depend on her ex, Cam, for help, but his new fiancee's jealousy is getting in the way. As the body count rises, Rook becomes ensnared in discovering who's committing the crimes—or she might be the next to die.

©2022 Michelle Bennington (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Enjoyable First in Series

This contemporary cozy-ish mystery is an entertaining read with some unique aspects. It is set in the small community of Rothdale in Kentucky's Bluegrass country where Bourbon is king. Rook Campbell is the likeable but flawed protagonist who manages to land a job at a mid-sized local distillery and comes with a grandmother who raised her, a father in prison for the murder of Rook's mother, a local sheriff who seems to visit the sins of the father on the daughter, and a sympathetic ex-husband.

The "cozy-ish" designation is because this book deals with some hard truths, including the death of a close friend, family illness, and the reality of caring for aging loved ones. It is not all rainbows and unicorns, but fortunately, it does not get bogged down in the negative and escapes being maudlin. Rook is a survivor, even if she can be her own worst enemy, and her grandmother is saucy, tenacious, a little cantankerous, and often very entertaining. I won't include spoilers, but I will say that there is one particular scene in the book that still makes me laugh when I picture it.

I confess that I identified the villains fairly early in the book, but that did not detract from my enjoyment of following Rook's investigation to its conclusion. Yes, there may be at least one TSTL moment.

All in all, I consider this a little gem in the realm of cozy (or cozy-ish) mysteries and look forward to the second book that I intend to read now.

Courtney Patterson does an excellent job of bringing these characters to life.

Diverting story.

As a lifelong resident of central Kentucky, I am very conscious of the rhythm and inflection of our local dialects. I can’t think of another author who has captured the speech patterns of rural central Kentucky women in a contemporary context.
I recognize these characters. I enjoyed the story.

4 stars

An entertaining mystery but has a slow pace. I'll get the next book to see if it gets better.