I went back to one of my favorite authors, Mary Jane Clark. Her second series is The Wedding Cake Mysteries, the first of which is “To Have and To Kill” (2011).
Piper Donovan has enough on her plate right now. An aspiring actress, the roles are few and far between after her character was killed off of a popular soap opera. She’s still going on auditions in New York City to build her career, but since she’s running short on money, the 27-year-old is moving back in with her parents.
Piper gets along with her parents better than most, but it’s tough to deal with her ex-cop dad constantly warning her about how careful she needs to be out in the dangerous world. Piper doesn’t mind helping her mom in the bakery shop, but she’s shocked when she learns her mom, Terri, is turning down jobs to bake and decorate wedding cakes. Piper knows her mom lives to decorate her baked goods, so that sets off red flags. Before Piper can ask about it, she gets sidetracked.
A friend from the soap, Glenna Brooks, announces she’s getting married, but she’s gotten a weird note, warning her to not go through with the nuptials. Even though she’s disturbed by the note, Glenna doesn’t want to go to the cops. Piper talks Glenna into showing the letter to her friend Jack, who’s an FBI agent, but Jack thinks the letter is just sour grapes from someone who doesn’t want Glenna to marry her fiance’.
Certain that marrying Casey is the right thing, Glenna asks if Piper’s mom will make her wedding cake, but Terri is adamant she won’t do it. Instead, she suggests that Piper bake and decorate the cake. Confused about why her mom won’t do it herself, Piper agrees to tackle the cake, but that quickly gets overshadowed when someone near Glenna turns up dead.
The evidence says it was murder; however, Piper has doubts that the killer got the person they were after. Could they have wanted to kill Glenna? And if she was the real target, will the killer try again?
I discovered Mary Jane Clark when I started reading her KEY News mystery series, the first of which is “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” I always appreciate writers who can capture the journalism world correctly – most don’t do their research and it annoys me no end – but Clark was a producer for CBS News, so she gets it.
When Clark wrapped up the 12-book KEY News series, she started the Wedding Cake Mysteries series. She’s made the switch quite nicely, bringing along many of the touches that made me really like her first series.
Clark crafts an extensive list of suspects and potential next victims, making it difficult for the reader to guess who the killer is or who might be the next victim. And it’s probably not who you think it will be.
Clark knows how to write suspense, building the tension one layer at a time, gradually introducing the reader to characters and their relationships. You have to pay attention, Clark slips in clues unobtrusively as she’s giving the exposition.
One thing I appreciated in this story was Clark’s inclusion of people of faith. Most novelists expunge any mention of religion, acting like nobody in the world has any religious affiliation or even knows anyone who does. In reality, almost everyone knows people who practice a religion, even if they themselves do not.
Another reason I’ve always liked Clark’s writing is because she brings real world facts into her fiction. Whether she’s tackling a social issue or a medical one, she does her research so the reader learns about the topic. I guess that’s the journalist in her.
Just one of the issues Clark tackles in this novel is adult children moving back home to live with their parents. Multiple generations living together was common in the days before retirement homes. The practice is becoming more common again. In Piper’s case, it’s a financial decision, but these days, many adults are moving back home or moving their elderly parents in with them so they can take care of them. No matter the reason, it’s a situation that can be fraught with confusion as parents and grown child negotiate new boundaries from the ones they used in the past.
Starting a new series can be tricky for a novelist, some lose the magic when they shift gears, but Clark didn’t at all. I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the series.
If you don’t want to get wrapped up in a long series, The Wedding Cake Mysteries are perfect; there’s only four of them. The next ones are “The Look of Love” (2012), “Footprints in the Sand” (2013) and “That Old Black Magic” (2014). There is one mystery that I haven’t been able to solve and that’s why Clark hasn’t published a book since 2014. She’s a novelist worth reading.
For more about Mary Jane Clark, visit maryjaneclark.com.
