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Lost and Fondue

Avery Aames
Berkley Publishing Group/Penguin Group (2011)
ISBN 9780425241585
Reviewed by Enid Grabiner for RebeccasReads (7/11))

Charlotte Besette, owner of Providence, Ohio’s local frommagerie “The Cheese Shop”, is busy catering a fundraiser for her close friend Meredith who is trying to establish a liberal arts college on the site of an abandoned winery rumored to hold a long, lost hidden treasure.  She is aided by wine expert Matthew, her cousin and boyfriend of Meredith, and assistant Rebecca, who left the Amish fold and is now an amateur sleuth.
 
During a planned scavenger hunt for the lost objects at the function Charlotte stumbles across the body of one of the art students brought in to paint the winery.  Quinn, niece of Meredith, is another of the budding artists and is the girlfriend of the deceased, Harker Fontaine.  Heard arguing with him before the murder, she   becomes the main murder suspect.   Her father, Freddy is one of the art teachers and is escorted by Nicole, a potential donor to the proposed college.  Her motives are suspect.

Add to the confusion many more art students,  Matthew’s flamboyant ex-wife who abandoned him and their twin daughters, Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend who is the attending policeman, her new boyfriend, her French theatrical grandparents and a myriad of local merchants and the convoluted plot becomes even more complicated to follow.  The main mystery is overshadowed by the complexity of back stories of each of the characters and their relationships to each other.  They all seem to have a past that impacts the present goings-on.  If the author would have spent more time on the investigation and eliminated the extraneous information, the flow of the novel would have been greatly improved.

This is a charming little mystery but the cutesy names and puns make it quite Cheesy!  Oops, sorry!

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