Cozy Mystery Review: The Chocolate Shark Shenanigans | Joanna Carl

Are any of us not tempted by a chocolate lover’s mystery? Joanna Carl’s Chocaholic Mystery series it a whole lot of mouth-watering fun! In Chocolate Shark Shenanigans, what starts as a house flipping project leads to murder…

Lee Woodyard isn’t excited about her husband Joe’s plan to buy the house next door and flip it. He’s cooked this up with her uncle, Hogan Jones, who happens to be the local police chief. Lee would rather spend her time working as the business manager at her aunt’s chocolate shop, but she agrees to at least meet with the plumber for an estimate. When the plumber is checking out the house, he finds a bundle of rags in the cellar that have a gun hidden inside, which he realizes too late as he it accidentally goes off. Thankfully it missed Lee!

No one is sure where the gun came from, but it seems to lead back to an incident involving the Sharks—a group of high school boys who pulled pranks (among other things) back in the day. One of those “pranks” involved pretending to rob a convenience store where one of the members worked, he pulled out a fun and fired it. The bullet didn’t hit anyone, but it does seem to have similarities to what happened to the plumber.

Meanwhile a local business developer Richard “Spud” Dirk had tried to swoop in and outbid them on the house, but Hogan and Joe don’t want to let it go. That’s the least of their worries, though. When Lee and her uncle Hogan go back to the house so he can see where the gun was found, and they find a dead body—Spud! With Hogan pulled off the case due to the bidding dispute over the property, Lee may have to use her own sleuthing skills to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Chocolate Shark Shenanigans is on the sillier side of cozy mysteries, but the humor is fun and the characters are quirky and enjoyable. This isn’t the most serious of mysteries, despite it involving a murder. The fun outweighed the mystery-solving in my eyes, which was fine and will appeal to readers who are looking for something light that still has mystery to it.

The story is on the shorter side—its easily a read-in-an-afternoon kind of book which can be perfect for a lazy Sunday. I actually liked that it was shorter because it kept the story tight and didn’t meander the way some cozy mysteries do.

Lots of tidbits and trivia about chocolate throughout! I definitely learned a thing or two, though not enough to open my own chocolate shop. Fans of the series and those new to it will enjoy this funny, light mystery!

About the Author

JOANNA CARL is the pseudonym for the multi-published mystery writer Eve K. Sandstrom. The author writes about the shores of Lake Michigan and has been reviewed in Michigan newspapers as a “regional writer.” She has also written about Southwest Oklahoma and once won an award for the best book of the year with an Oklahoma setting.

Eve’s editor requested that she use a pen name for the new series, and Eve picked the middle names of her three children, Betsy Jo, Ruth Anna, and John Carl. “JoAnna Carl” was born. So that’s how JoAnna/Eve became a regional author in two widely separated regions.

JoAnna/Eve earned a degree in journalism at the University of Oklahoma and also studied with Carolyn G. Hart and Jack Bickham in the OU Creative Writing Program. She spent more than twenty-five years in the newspaper business, working as a reporter, editor, and columnist at The Lawton Constitution in Lawton, Oklahoma. She took an early retirement to write fiction full-time.

She and her husband, David F. Sandstrom, have three grandchildren, whom they love introducing to the lore of their two homes – Oklahoma and Michigan.

She spent 25 years in the newspaper business as a reporter, feature writer, editor, and columnist, most recently at the Lawton Constitution. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of OK and also studied in the O.U. Professional Writing program. She lives in Oklahoma but summers in Michigan where the Chocoholic Mystery series is set. She has one daughter who is a CPA and another who works for a chocolate company and provides yummy insider information on the chocolate business.

About the Book

When a house near Lee and Joe’s home goes up for sale, the couple teams up with Lee’s aunt and uncle, Nettie and Hogan, to buy it, remodel it, and resell it for a sweet profit. But after the owners of the house, the Baileys, accept their offer, a local developer, Richard “Spud” Dirk, suddenly swoops in with a higher one, and it seems their dreams might be snatched away.

Lee, never as passionate about the plan as her husband and uncle, is anxious to get back to focusing on managing TenHuis Chocolade. But when a long-hidden gun is found behind a pipe in the Baileys’ basement, she begins to suspect a mystery is afoot. And when Spud turns up dead in the Baileys’ carport a few days later, it becomes clear there’s something rotten at the foundation….

To solve the murder, Lee will have to strip away layers of secrets–that is, if someone doesn’t level her first….