Culinary Cozy Mysteries: The Best Food and Bakery Mystery Series

Culinary cozy mysteries are murder mysteries served with dessert. The sleuth runs a bakery, a tea shop, a coffeehouse or a catering business. The body usually turns up next to something she baked. Almost every series includes recipes, so you can bake the cookies while you guess the killer. Here you will find the best series, the books we have reviewed and a few ideas for your next comfort read.

What Are Culinary Cozy Mysteries?

A cozy mystery is the gentle side of mystery fiction. There is a murder, but no graphic violence, and the detective is an amateur. Culinary cozies add food and the culinary arts. The heroine is a baker, a chef, a caterer or a food critic, and her kitchen is the center of the story.

Diane Mott Davidson set the pattern in 1990, and Joanne Fluke made it a bestseller shelf of its own ten years later. Today there are culinary cozy mystery books about cupcakes, doughnuts, pies, noodles, tea and coffee. Every bookshop has a table of them. Readers call the whole group culinary mysteries or simply food cozies.

Common Elements of a Comfort Food Murder Mystery

Most of these series share the same comfort food recipe:

• A food business. The heroine owns a bakery, a cupcake shop, a confectionery store, a coffee shop or a restaurant.
• A small-town setting. Everybody knows everybody, and gossip moves faster than the police.
• A victim with enemies. Someone turns up dead after eating, drinking or judging the food.
• Amateur sleuthing. She asks questions over coffee and cake, because her own business is at risk.
• Recipes at the end of the chapters or the book. Recipes are included in almost every series on this page.
• A move home. Many heroines inherit a family shop or leave the big city to start again.
• Friends, family and love interests. The secondary characters are often the reason readers stay for twenty books.
• Pun titles. Death by Darjeeling, Sprinkle with Murder, The Diva Runs Out of Thyme.

What Makes a Good Culinary Cozy Mystery?

The food has to matter to the plot. In the best books a poisoned cup, a missing ingredient or a burnt cake is the clue, not decoration. Good food descriptions make you hungry, but they never stop the story.

The second thing is the heroine. We like sleuths who are good at their job and who solve the crime because they know people. The third is a place you want to go back to: Lake Eden in winter, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse, a tea shop in Charleston.

The Best Culinary Cozy Mystery Series

These are the popular series we recommend first. Each started a long run of books, and each opener is a good first in a culinary cozy series for new readers.

Hannah Swensen Mysteries by Joanne Fluke: The Cookie Jar

Hannah Swensen runs The Cookie Jar bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota. In Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (2000) the dairy delivery man is found shot behind her shop, with her cookies at the crime scene. Hannah bribes suspects with cookies and solves the case before her brother-in-law, a deputy sheriff, can. This is the best-known food series in America, and every book includes recipes. Read our Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder review.

Coffeehouse Mysteries by Cleo Coyle

Clare Cosi manages the Village Blend, a century-old coffeehouse in Greenwich Village. In On What Grounds a murder happens in her own shop. Cleo Coyle is the pen name of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini, a married writing team. Start with our On What Grounds review, then read our Coffeehouse Mystery series review.

Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs

Theodosia Browning owns the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston. In Death by Darjeeling (2001) a property developer dies at a garden party with an empty teacup in his hand. Her tea expert, Drayton, helps her find the killer. This is the series for tea shop cozy mysteries. See our Death by Darjeeling review.

Goldy Bear Culinary Mysteries by Diane Mott Davidson

Goldy Bear is a divorced mother who runs a catering business in Aspen Meadow, Colorado. Catering to Nobody (1990) was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first novel. Goldy’s ex-father-in-law drinks poisoned coffee at a wake she caters, and the health department closes her kitchen. Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldy books are often called the start of the genre, and she was dubbed the Julia Child of mystery writers. Read our Catering to Nobody review.

Cupcake Bakery Mysteries: A Series by Jenn McKinlay

Mel Cooper leaves her office job to open Fairy Tale Cupcakes in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her two best friends. In Sprinkle with Murder (2010) a bridezilla client dies, and the cupcake shop is suddenly part of a murder case. The series has sixteen books. If you love Jenn McKinlay’s cupcake stories, Jenn McKinlay also writes the Library Lover’s Mysteries. She is a New York Times bestselling author, and bookish readers will like her too. Read our Sprinkle with Murder review or visit our Jenn McKinlay page.

Domestic Diva Mysteries by Krista Davis

Sophie Winston is an event planner in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. The Diva Runs Out of Thyme is a Thanksgiving murder mystery. Expect a stuffing contest, a dead private investigator and her ex-husband at the dinner table. See our Diva Runs Out of Thyme review, the Domestic Diva series page and our Krista Davis page.

More Shop Mystery Series to Read, from Ellie Alexander’s Bakeshop to Key West

We have not reviewed these yet, but they are on every reading list, and they are next on ours:

• Bakeshop Mystery series by Ellie Alexander – Jules Capshaw moves home to Ashland, Oregon, to work at Torte, her family’s bakeshop. The first book is Meet Your Baker.
• Key West Food Critic Mysteries by Lucy Burdette – Hayley Snow reviews restaurants in Key West. Expect key lime pie and a lot of seafood.
• Noodle Shop Mysteries by Vivien Chien – Lana Lee works at her family’s noodle shop in Cleveland. Death by Dumpling is the first.
• Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery series by Ellery Adams – Ella Mae LeFaye bakes magic pies in Georgia. The first is Pies and Prejudice.
• Donut Shop Mysteries by Jessica Beck – Suzanne Hart makes doughnuts in a small North Carolina town.
• Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries by Mia P. Manansala – Lila Macapagal comes back to her aunt’s Filipino restaurant. Start with Arsenic and Adobo.
• Vintage Cookbook Mysteries by Ellen Byron – Charly Poisson works at a culinary house museum in New Orleans.
• Aunty Lee’s Delights by Ovidia Yu – a Singapore cook who solves crimes between the chili and the curry.
• Lexy Baker Cozy Mystery series by Leighann Dobbs – a young baker, her bakery and a lot of cupcakes.

In What Order Should You Read the Hannah Swensen Books?

Read them in publication order. Each book solves its own murder. Hannah’s love interests, Norman and Mike, and her family change from book to book. The first books in the series are:

1. Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (2000)
2. Strawberry Shortcake Murder (2001)
3. Blueberry Muffin Murder (2002)
4. Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (2003)
5. Fudge Cupcake Murder (2004)
6. Sugar Cookie Murder (2004)
7. Peach Cobbler Murder (2005)
8. Cherry Cheesecake Murder (2006)
9. Key Lime Pie Murder (2007)

The series has more than twenty-five novels, and Fluke still adds new ones. We have reviewed the first four.

Culinary Cozy Mysteries for Thanksgiving and Christmas

Holiday food and holiday murder go well together. For Thanksgiving, read The Diva Runs Out of Thyme by Krista Davis. For Christmas, Fluke wrote Sugar Cookie Murder and Plum Pudding Murder, both with holiday recipes. Most long series have at least one Christmas book, often with gingerbread on the cover.

Where to Start: Read Culinary Cozy Books from Our Reviews

We have reviewed ten of these books so far. New to the genre? Pick Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder for the classic bakery story, or Catering to Nobody for the book that started it all. If you like coffee more than cookies, choose On What Grounds.

New Culinary Cozy Mystery Books Coming Out Soon

The genre is still growing. Laura Childs, Cleo Coyle, Fluke and Ellie Alexander add new books to their series almost every year. New series about cooking, noodle shops and family restaurants start every season. We add new reviews to this page as we read them.

Frequently Asked Questions About Culinary Cozies

What is the best culinary cozy mystery?

For most readers it is Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. It is warm, funny and full of cookies, and the book is the first in a series with more than twenty-five titles. It is also the best cozy to start with if you have never read one. If you want a stronger mystery, try Catering to Nobody.

Do culinary cozy mysteries include recipes?

Most of them do. Fluke, Davidson, Cleo Coyle and Laura Childs put recipes in every book. Some readers buy them as much for the cookbook as for the murder.

What are some good Scottish detective book series?

For a cozy Scottish detective, read M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth books, set in the Highlands. Start with our Death of a Gossip review, and see our British cozy mysteries page for more.

Do I need to read the books in order?

Not really. Each book solves its own murder. The characters and their love lives grow from book to book, though, so starting with the first novel is more fun.

Where can I buy culinary cozy mystery books?

Every series on this page is in print, on Kindle and in most public libraries. Many are also audiobooks. Older books in long series are cheap second-hand, so you can read a whole series without spending much.

Is a cozy culinary mystery the same as a cozy crime novel?

Yes, it is one kind of cozy crime, the softest corner of crime fiction. It has a small community, an amateur detective and no graphic violence, plus food.