Murder and Mayheim

 

Murder and Mayheim is a silly over the top romance murder cozy by Ronica Black & Toni Logan. Due out 16th June 2026 by Bold Strokes Books, it's 222 pages and will be available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. 

This is a undemanding and very light cozy mystery, first in a series, featuring a 40 year old bookstore owner as an amateur sleuth. The largely female cast is filled with quirky humorous characters, over the top and silly, but mostly superficially appealing. 

There are a lot of trope aspects: a collection of eccentric oddballs for local color, amateur dramatics in the form of a murder-mystery themed cruise, and lots and lots of snark. The dialogue aims for very light bantering humor and mostly succeeds. Some of the dialogue is so unrealistic that it yanked me out of the story, but mostly, it's standard for the subgenre. The author does a good job with including enough world building backstory to move the narrative along without drowning readers in too much info. 

The romance plot is F/F and there is light spice/intimacy involved. Language is PG/R rated for a few scattered f-bombs.  

It's a very lighthearted, often silly cozy mystery with oddball characters and a completely over the top denouement and resolution. The solution was foreshadowed fairly heavily, but there were a couple of twists in the climax which, although completely crazy and entirely unrealistic, added a bit of excitement. 

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 7 hours 44 minutes and is capably read by Kate Wisniewski. She has a well modulated alto voice and a neutral American West Coast accent for this read. She does a good job of delineating a disparate cast of characters, both male and female, and a range of ages. There are some regional accents which seemed to be difficult for her, but they're brief and fleeting and don't really detract from the read.

Three and a half stars. It would be a good choice for a binge/buddy cozy read. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.