Bitter Sweets

"Fun reading" featuring a sweet-toothed Southern belle fighting crime in California: a heroine with "indomitable charm [and] wicked humor" (Library Journal).
Now that Savannah Reid has no badge and no income, she's not sure where her next box of Godiva truffles is coming from. So the plus-size former cop opens a private investigation firm in her small seaside town. Just when Savannah thinks she and her cats may have to go on an enforced diet, the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency scores its first assignment: a missing-person case.

Brian O'Donnell wants to find his sister, Lisa, who was given up for adoption by their father years ago. But Lisa has a reason for hiding out, and Savannah's efforts to locate her lead to tragedy. Now, Savannah has a murder case to solve and the life of yet another innocent victim to protect. This proves nearly impossible with the police ready to arrest Savannah—and her feisty Southern granny dropping in for an impromptu visit.

Featuring a "warm, winsome, and weight-bedeviled" Georgia native who's left the South for Southern California, this series is a delight for fans of Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy Schultz Culinary Mysteries or Anne George's Southern Sisters novels (Publishers Weekly).