Asking for Truffle: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery

Charity Penn wins a contest for cooking lessons at a chocolate shop in Camellia Beach, South Carolina. A contest she never entered. When her friend Skinny McGee goes to investigate, he ends up murdered in a vat of chocolate. Searching for answers, Penn travels to Camellia Beach to find a killer and learn the shocking secrets that may have led to her friend’s death. As she investigates, she ends up in the middle of a divorced couple and an estranged family.

Asking for Truffle has all that’s enjoyable about a cozy mystery: quirkiness, danger, feisty pets, humor, and chocolate. It’s charming and sweet, except for the whole murder part, with an addictive mystery that keeps you up late reading. Dorothy St. James creates a vast range of eccentric characters with strong motives, but the most intriguing character is the one rarely seen, and that’s Skinny McGee, the murder victim. He’s a loyal friend and laid-back surfer, yet the suspects she meets call him a troublemaker. Like Skinny, the other characters aren’t what they first appear to be; everyone has another side to them, making it difficult for Penn to know who to trust.