Boiled in Butter with a Side of Murder
(2026)(The sixth book in the Bizzy Devlin Cozy Mystery series)
A novel by TJ Costello
The dog followed the butter.
Photographer Bizzy Devlin has one job this summer: shoot the Chamber's Taste of Pullen Pointe campaign. Eleven eating establishments, two of them rival food trucks, one ocean view, and a clipboard-wielding director who revises the shot list the way the tide comes in. Easy money. Appetizing steam.
Then Luigi, her apricot Labradoodle, now wearing goggles for reasons that will be explained, follows a trail of dripping butter to the prettiest crime scene in the county: one of the rival trucks, owned by the ice-cold newcomer who parked it in her ex-husband's town, named it after his restaurant, and will not be serving lunch. The police have their suspect within the day: the gentlest man on the harbor, who said the wrong thing to her in front of witnesses. But Bizzy spent ten years as a forensic photographer, and dropped things fall stupidly. This scene was composed.
Somebody with time, patience, and a very good sense of how a picture reads built a frame around an innocent man, and somebody is still watching. With Jacko color-coding the Bagel Board, best friend Edy cutting through her denial, a four-pound Yorkshire terrier with strong opinions, and Detective Doug Williams reminding her weekly, over lunch, exactly what she promised him about finding bodies, Bizzy sets up the most dangerous shot of her career.
Good thing she sees what other people miss. Better thing: so does her dog. Best thing: this time there are two dogs.
Book 6 of the Bizzy Devlin Cozy Mysteries. A fair-play seaside whodunit with laugh-out-loud dogs, brown butter you can smell from the page, and a final chapter that finally puts the top down: every clue on the page so you can solve it right alongside Bizzy and Jacko, no gore, no cliffhangers. Each mystery stands alone, and the town is best moved into from Book 1.
Amateur sleuth Dog cozy mystery Culinary cozy Small-town New England Clean & cozy
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Photographer Bizzy Devlin has one job this summer: shoot the Chamber's Taste of Pullen Pointe campaign. Eleven eating establishments, two of them rival food trucks, one ocean view, and a clipboard-wielding director who revises the shot list the way the tide comes in. Easy money. Appetizing steam.
Then Luigi, her apricot Labradoodle, now wearing goggles for reasons that will be explained, follows a trail of dripping butter to the prettiest crime scene in the county: one of the rival trucks, owned by the ice-cold newcomer who parked it in her ex-husband's town, named it after his restaurant, and will not be serving lunch. The police have their suspect within the day: the gentlest man on the harbor, who said the wrong thing to her in front of witnesses. But Bizzy spent ten years as a forensic photographer, and dropped things fall stupidly. This scene was composed.
Somebody with time, patience, and a very good sense of how a picture reads built a frame around an innocent man, and somebody is still watching. With Jacko color-coding the Bagel Board, best friend Edy cutting through her denial, a four-pound Yorkshire terrier with strong opinions, and Detective Doug Williams reminding her weekly, over lunch, exactly what she promised him about finding bodies, Bizzy sets up the most dangerous shot of her career.
Good thing she sees what other people miss. Better thing: so does her dog. Best thing: this time there are two dogs.
Book 6 of the Bizzy Devlin Cozy Mysteries. A fair-play seaside whodunit with laugh-out-loud dogs, brown butter you can smell from the page, and a final chapter that finally puts the top down: every clue on the page so you can solve it right alongside Bizzy and Jacko, no gore, no cliffhangers. Each mystery stands alone, and the town is best moved into from Book 1.
Amateur sleuth Dog cozy mystery Culinary cozy Small-town New England Clean & cozy
Genre: Cozy Mystery