Rosemary and Crime by Gail Oust

Piper has a dream; she's going to own the best spice shop ever and be a very successful business person.  Her grand opening is coming up and she has an excellent chef scheduled to do a cooking demonstration that day.  She's nervous and not sleeping well in anticipation of the big day when she hears a dog crying.  She can't stand that, so she gets up to find out what's going on.  The dog is injured; the chef's door is open.  It shouldn't be at that time of night.  She should have just called the police...

St. Martin's Press and Net Galley allowed me to download an ebook of this story for review (thank you).  It was published December 17th, so check with your local bookstore for a copy.

This is a new series and I like it.  It's great fun and has nice mix of brave women, a handsome police chief and discussions about the use of spices.

Piper goes in to see if her friend is OK and finds him dead on the floor.  The silly girl picked up the knife on the way in because he was famous for throwing utensils at those he argued with.  She had no idea it was the murder weapon.  Oops...

Piper does NOT like being a suspect, so she gets her best girlfriend to work with her on "detecting".  Reading how they do a "stakeout" will make you laugh.  P. I.'s they're not.  They don't seem to be closing in on the murderer, but they sure are frustrating the police chief.  He tries hard to get Piper to back off.  Stubborn women don't listen to men.  Of course, her ex-husband has something to do with that.

You have the ex butting in, the mother-in-law still hanging around, the daughter that uses both parents against each other and a budding romance with the new police chief.  I enjoyed the story, the humor, and the silliness of some of the situations.  How do you tell your ex-mother-in-law you don't want your spices in alphabetical order?

I'm already looking forward to the next one in this series.  Piper is just getting started!

Happy reading.