Blake Harper owns Mystery Cup in Wilton, Missouri and is seriously deciding to replace one of her baristas, a girl named Nikki. She hired Nikki as a favor to a friend of her mother's, but Nikki doesn't even show up on time or do her job well. When Nikki does realize she might be fired, she begs Blake for another chance and promises she'll improve. She even offers to do inventory that night so Blake can relax at home.

Blake gives her the chance, but it doesn't turn out the way she hoped. Seeing a light in her shop long after Nikki should be gone, she enters and finds the girl dead in a pile of coffee beans. Shaken, she calls her sister Kyle - a police detective - and so begins the hunt for a killer; and the reason why Mystery Cup was vandalized and Nikki killed.

Not willing to leave the sleuthing to her sister, she decides to do a little investigating on her own. But then something else occurs to up the ante and Blake realizes that Nikki might not have been the target after all and wonders if she might have been the one the murderer was after in the first place. But can her investigating discover a killer or will the killer discover that she's trying to find them and put her permanently out of business...

I felt that the mystery itself was done well. There were plenty of suspects and enough red herrings to keep mystery lovers interested. The clues seemed to point in several different directions, and that was nice in that it keeps one guessing as to who the true murderer might be. However, I do feel that the town and its inhabitants could have been fleshed out more. I felt that if less attention had been paid to conversations about 'hot guys' and trying to find Blake a love interest, then we would have learned more about the town and its inhabitants. We weren't really given any reason why it would be a big tourist attraction; surely murders that occurred nearly fifty years ago wouldn't bring them by the carloads into town unless they were ghost hunters.

Aside from this, the book was very good and the mystery enjoyable, and I liked the main characters. When the murderer was discovered it came as a surprise, and makes us realize that desperation can drive people to do things which we never thought possible. Recommended, and I look forward to the next in the series. ( )