Triple Shot

October 17, 2011
In Balzo’s stimulating seventh Maggie Thorsen mystery (after 2010’s A Cup of Jo), over-the-hill TV star Ward Chitown plans to do a show about a shootout in Brookhills, Wis., in 1974 between the FBI and the Mafia that left six dead and a fortune missing. Titled The Treasure of the Brookhills Massacre, it’s to include a Geraldo Rivera–type hunt for the lost money. Meanwhile, Maggy’s business partner in the coffeehouse Uncommon Grounds, Sarah Kingston, who owns Kingston Realty, is worried because someone is killing real estate agents. An underground room beneath the coffee shop, a secret tunnel, a missing real estate agent, Chitown’s entourage, and a gaggle of rich, spoiled “Brookhills Barbies” provide plenty of grist. Maggy’s boyfriend, county sheriff Jake Pavlik, supplies romance and support as Maggy’s penchant for being an “intermeddler” lands her in trouble again. This amusing, well-written entry should win Balzo more fans.

November 15, 2011
Murder comes a little too close for comfort when Maggy Thorsen (A Cup of Jo, 2010, etc.) finds a body underneath her coffee shop. The historic train depot of a suburban rail line would seem to be the perfect location for Uncommon Grounds. After serving the rush of Milwaukee-bound commuters, the coffee shop still gets a steady trickle of what Maggy calls "Brookhills Barbies," pencil-thin, tanned and back from their tennis lessons. And there's the occasional celebrity, like TV reporter Ward Chitown, who's in Brookhills with his producer Deirdre Doty to film a segment on the Brookhills Massacre, an FBI-vs.-Mob battle that took place--who'd a thunk it?--beneath the very floorboards of Maggy's establishment. Naturally, Maggy gets to investigate her own mini-massacre when Chitown, Deirdre and local reporter Kate McNamara discover Brigid Ferndale sleeping with the fishes. Brigid once worked for real-estate agent Sarah Kingston, Maggy's partner in Common Grounds. Is her death just one more in a string of agent killings that's rocked the Brookhills' real estate world? Or is it linked to her lawsuit against bipolar Sarah, who responds to the crisis by packing a Smith and Wesson? It's a race between Maggy, clad in her special red dress for the festivities, and her boyfriend, sexy Sheriff Jake Pavlik, to unravel yet another baffling crime. Balzo's formula has gone staler than yesterday's cappuccino. Even Maggy's red dress can't save this one.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2011

In her seventh outing, Milwaukee-based barista Maggy (A Cup of Jo) brews up an old-time mob case with contemporary connections.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2011
Missing Mafia money and murdered female real-estate agents mix in the seventh in Balzo's Maggy Thorsen series. As always, the intrepid Maggy, co-owner of Uncommon Grounds coffee shop in Brookhills, Wisconsin, lands in the midst of the action. When a dreadful odor leads to the discovery of Brigid Ferndale's body near the coffee shop, Maggy's business partner, Sarah Kingston, finds herself under suspicion, since Brigid (the third real-estate agent killed in a week) was an apprentice with a company that had just filed a complaint against Sarah. As Sheriff Jake Pavlik, Maggy's lover, investigates the killings, a past-his-prime Chicago newsman turns up in town, looking for money presumed hidden after the 1974 Brookhills Massacre, a shootout between the FBI and the Milwaukee Mafia that left three dead on each side and millions in cash apparently gone. Despite irritating Pavlik with her probing, Maggy is on-site to put the pieces together, becoming an instant Internet sensation. Multiple bodies notwithstanding, this is appealing, lighthearted fare.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)