Trinidad Jones is spending her first fall in her new home, Upper Sprocket, Oregon. Her Shimmy and Shake ice cream shop is back up and running after the unpleasantness that happened over the summer (when a killer tried to destroy the shop), and she’s ready to churn some ice cream and sell some of her monster milkshakes, which she calls Freakshakes.
She is worried about finances, running an ice cream shop over the winter in such a cold environment, but with Alpenfest going on, Trinidad is hoping to make some extra money and to add some new customers who want to eat ice cream all winter long. The tourists who are in town for the Alpenfest activities, like the yodeling contest and the concert, are excited to try out Trinidad’s sweet treats. But will it be enough?
After the unpleasantness, Trinidad’s grandfather had come to stay with her for a while, to help out. Papa Luis had just showed up one day in his signature 1951 Chevy Bel Air, and he’d been staying with Trinidad and her rescue dog Noodles ever since. Papa Luis used his car as a business, transporting people and items for the people of Upper Sprocket. But when he goes to get Trinidad’s blueberries from his trunk, he finds that someone else stashed something in the trunk that he hadn’t known he was transporting.
Papa Luis went in the house to get Trinidad, to show her what’s in the trunk, and even though it’s dark out and raining, she can’t mistake that she sees a hand sticking out from the rug she’d never seen before. They go inside to call for help, and when Chief Cynthia Bigley shows up and pops open the trunk, she finds an even bigger surprise than the body Trinidad and Papa Luis had found. The chief finds . . . nothing. There is no body in the trunk.
The next day, the police impound the car and they do find evidence that someone had been in the trunk. But who would stash a body in Papa Luis’s trunk, then take it back out? And why? And maybe more importantly, who was it?
The police do find the body, when it floats to the surface of a nearby lake, so they figure out that the victim was Forge Emberly. He ran a local excursion business, taking tourists on a 3-hour train trip through the beautiful landscapes of eastern Oregon. He was wanting to set up a second run, but he was having trouble getting access to the land he needed. Or he had been, before Quinn had decided to sell some of his land to him.
Trinidad was shocked to learn that Quinn had sold to Forge. She knew that Quinn was not a fan of Forge and his business, but more than that, he was not a fan of anyone wanting to cut down trees. Trinidad had been spending a lot of time with Quinn and his younger brother David. She thought they’d been forging a relationships. But now, she finds herself questioning how well she knows Quinn.
Add to that the teenage twins who work at the Shimmy and Shake Shop have dug up a story about a local woman who had disappeared 30 years before. They get the idea that Forge’s death is connected somehow to what happened back then, but does that really seem likely? Or is it more likely that he was killed by someone who didn’t want him to destroy their forests to create another excursion?
Since Trinidad helped find the killer earlier in the year, she thinks she may be able to figure out who killed Forge. But she also has to figure out how to keep her shop open during the winter, and to decide what kind of relationship she wants with Quinn. Will she be able to find the answers she needs, or will she come up as empty as Papa Luis’s trunk?
A Sprinkle in Time is the second in Dana Mentink’s Shake Shop Mystery series, and it’s just as delicious as the first one. Trinidad and her family and friends are full of personality, and her magnificent shake creations sound absolutely delicious. Stock your freezer before you read this, as you’ll be wanting ice cream the whole time (or better yet, go out and support your local artisan ice cream shop).
I really enjoyed A Sprinkle in Time. I love these characters, and Mentink’s writing is lovely. Setting the murder against Alpenfest made for a lot of fun and interesting situations, like the alphorn concert. I did find the murder mystery a little easy to solve, but I still had a great time reading it. These books are lots of fun, and in the Venn diagram where cozy mystery fans overlap with ice cream fans, this is the sweet spot.
Egalleys for A Sprinkle in Time were provided by Poisoned Pen Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.
