A cozy mystery opening featuring an engaging protagonist, a murder...and lots of cheese.
Bird Nichols has been through a lot lately. She’s been trying to get a custom cheese board business off of the ground. Her grandmother, not too long after her parents’ death, has disappeared and has been declared dead, with Bird as the heir to her California Central Coast house. Now, just as Bird settles in, a reprobate neighbor turns up dead, and the prime suspect is Grizz, an old friend to her grandmother, and a fatherly figure in Bird’s life. Now, Bird has to do what her grandma apparently did all of her life and get snoopy, or else Grizz could wind up brie-hind bars for a murder he didn’t commit. But who did, and why?
This is the story of Cheddar Luck Next Time, a murder mystery by Beth Cato.
Longtime readers of my reviews know that I commonly neither read nor review straight up murder mystery novels. It’s not my usual slice of cheese at all, although SFF murder mysteries ranging from Mary Robinette Kowal to Mur Lafferty to Laura Anne Gilman have attracted my interest and attention. I mainly “followed” Beth Cato out of genre and into mystery based on my enjoyment of her previous more straight-up genre work from the Clockwork Dagger series to most recently, her Chefs of The Five Gods duology.
The throughlines of the novel are pretty clear even for me, not fully immersed in all the nuanced protocols of straight up murder mysteries. Bird is an engaging young protagonist, single, trying to make a living with her passion. Trying to return to and live in the very small community she spent vacations in and living there, a community at turns both welcoming and suspicious of her. A real sense that her grandmother was, in the end, a meddler, and the community might see Bird falling into that role. And of course a murder mystery that, thanks to the friendship with someone she cares about as the prime suspect, pushing her inexorably toward trying to solve the mystery herself, even if that one client’s cheese board just will not wait.
One thing I should note is that Bird is autistic (like her creator) and that autism is presented and represented in an excellent and engaging way. The author doesn’t let you forget it, in ways small and large, but its not the story of Bird, any more than what her hair color is. There is an author’s note at the end about autism and its importance in recognizing and diagnosing it, for herself, and urging readers who might have similar experiences to get themselves tested and diagnosed themselves. I commend this outreach on Cato's part.
I think the mystery is a fair one, with a small town, the list of suspect is pretty small, and the eventual murderer makes sense given the evidence and clues we are given throughout the novel. Again, my protocols are not so finely honed as readers of many mysteries, I can’t answer if someone who has read very many mysteries will finger the killer, or will care that they do, before they reveal themselves. My reaction when the killer was revealed was “that makes sense” rather than “wait, what?”.
There is also a cat, Bowser, who winds up inserting himself into Bird’s life, in the inimitable way that unexpected pets (especially cats) do.
The writing quite supports what the author is going for in the book. Sure, there is a mysterious death, and some shady characters, and some peril for our heroine, but its meant to be a light and fun read and that’s the way the book comes across. I do think that this novel qualifies as “cozy murder mystery” based on my own reading. There is a murder and a mystery around it, but a lot of revolves around Bird’s regular life and her attempts to fit into her new surroundings. As mentioned above, the main character is autistic, and one of her mechanisms to interface better with the world is to talk to herself in a running commentary. This does allow us into her headspace and what she is thinking and a sense of her deduction of what really is going on. It makes it a comfortable, comforting read, neither a pulse pounding story nor a crackerjack intricate puzzle. This is a mystery story to relax with, and enjoy.
Foghorn, the fictional tiny town (more like a village) is the setting for our murder mystery, slipped into the Central Coast of California somewhere near San Simeon and Piedras Blancas. There are mentions of plenty of real places on the coast. There is a very strong sense of place, geography and physiography to Cato’s description of a place that she, as well as her protagonist, clearly have a strong connection to. Having Foghorn be a place that she’s not native, to, but visited as a child is an excellent choice to give her a tie to the tiny community and yet be something of an outsider as an adult. In any event, for me, the area reminded me of a vacation and trip from 30 years ago when I visited the region and it makes me wish to make a return visit to an underappreciated yet beautiful part of California.
The real star of this book is not the protagonist, or the murder mystery, or the setting, and it’s not even Bowser. The real star of this book is, in fact, cheese. The author is an expert and connoisseur of cheese (as much as she is of baking), and she pours that knowledge into Bird and her cheese boards. Every cheese that Bird enjoys throughout the book is a real cheese, and all of the pairings that Bird comes up with sounds real, authentic and delicious (did the author taste test all of these combinations? I would not be surprised in the least). In addition to Bird’s cheese business, there is a grilled cheese place in Foghorn called Quesoquick. Yes, the owner of the place, Dale, is cute, single and Bird and he hit it off but this is not a romance book. But its clear there is a could-be-more-down-the-road sort of vibe to their relationship. And, in addition to that, Dale and Quesoquick give even more chances for Cato to introduce cheese into the narrative.
Cheddar Luck Next Time is a light fun romp of a straight-up cozy mystery novel. The board of the novel has all the components for an easy snack of a read that is never over Leyden: an engaging main character, a quirky fictional very small town, a solidly plotted murder, a mild stab toward romance, and a heck of a lot of delicious cheese and cheese combinations. The novel’s components are all arranged by the author in an aesthetic and culinary pleasing way, delicious from the first to the last bite. Can a book be a mystery novel and yet teach you delicious ways to combine, pair and eat cheese? Yes it can, and does a Gouda job of it. Cheddar Luck Next Time is a light, quirky and fun mystery novel that shows off and ably demonstrates Cato’s love of the Central Coast region of California and yes, of course, delicious cheese and cheese preparations of a delicious and tantalizing variety.
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Highlights:
- Cheese, from the title to the last page. All kinds of real, hunger inducing cheese
- Light, frothy, and fun mystery.
- Great sense of place
- Did I mention Cheese?
Reference: Cato, Beth, Cheddar Luck Next Time, [Datura Books, 2025]
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
