a cheese worth dying for

Willa Bauer has a case of the blues. It’s not just about cheese this time. Her mentor has died, and she’s feeling sad. Before Willa had moved to Yarrow Glen in the Sonoma Valley, she worked for Max Dumas at his Church Cheese Shop. At the time, she had peppered him with questions about the running the shop, trying to find out everything she could before opening her own shop, Curds and Whey.

Willa had been looking forward to seeing the gang she used to work with at Church, but Max had been killed in a car accident just before they all came for the Northwest Cheese Invitational, an annual celebration of cheese for makers and mongers. This year, the Northwest Cheese Society chose Yarrow Glen for the show, and Willa is happy that the people she used to work with could see her new store. At the show, there was a special presentation of Max’s famous bleu cheese, Church Bleu.

Church Bleu was a one-of-a-kind cheese that people would come to his shop for especially. He had long kept how he made the cheese and where he stored the cheese a secret, so no one else knew where he’d ben aging his wheels. The cheesemongers from Church Cheese were hoping to get the secrets at the reading of Max’s will, so they could use that as collateral to buy the shop and continue his work. Instead, there was a single clue given to the attendees of the reading, but no one knew what it meant.

The shop had been left to his daughter Maxine, who he’d been estranged from for most of her life. She planned to sell the shop. Kendall was the top cheeseseller at the shop, and she had hoped to continue Max’s legacy, but he didn’t leave her the location of his cheese cave. None of the other employees got it either, nor Hugo, the president of the Northwest Cheese Society. Willa wasn’t terribly surprised that Max had only left a clue to the famous cheese’s location. The only thing Max had loved as much as cheese was a mystery.

As WIlla tries her hand at figuring out what the clue in the will meant, her friend Kendall had a bad allergy attack and couldn’t get her epi pen in time. She had been known to be allergic to honey, and while they had been to the local meadery earlier that day, they had mostly bought wine that would have been safe for her to drink. But when the cups were found to have traces of the mead, and Kendall’s epi pen was found in a trash can, Willa knew that her death had been no accident. Someone had murdered Kendall to try to get to the cheese.

Willa and her friends try to solve the mystery of Max’s cheese while also looking into who might have killed Kendall, much to the chagrin of the local police. But will their investigating bring Willa too close to someone who is willing to kill to find Max’s cheese?

Case of the Bleus is Korina Moss’s fourth book in the Cheese Shop Mystery, and I think it’s her most delicious to date. These mysteries, set in an artisan cheese shop in a small town in California, are filled with charm and fun and interesting mysteries to solve. At the end, there are cheesy recipes, like the Ham and Bleu Cheese Tart, Gorgonzola Garlic Bread, and Cool and Creamy Dolce Dip, so readers can find their own local cheese shop and snack along with the characters. (I mean, Gorgonzola Garlic Bread? Hello, gorgeous!)

I loved Case of the Bleus. I thought it was fun to meet some of the people from Willa’s past, but learning about the famous Church Bleu and hearing about cheese caves was fascinating. It lent an extra air of mystery to the murder and trying to figure out the riddles was lots of fun. I look forward to more cheesy fun in the next book, and a deeper understanding and appreciation for the cheeses that I love so much.

Egalleys for Case of the Bleus were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.