Chowder, Clams, and Crime

A Small Town Culinary Cozy Mystery with Cat

By: Maisy Marple

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Blair Whitcome has been planning her smoked Gulf clam chowder for the Pelican Harbor Seafood Festival for weeks, and opening night is everything she hoped for—lanterns strung over the waterfront, the smell of grilling seafood on the salt air, and a line at her VIP tasting booth that stretches to the pier. Then Lil' Beefy goes still at the edge of the koi pond, and Blair looks down to find the lighthouse keeper face-down in the water with an oyster rake across his back. Orin Voclain had been sitting on a deadly secret for twenty years. He'd finally decided to come forward. Someone made sure he never got the chance.

When the investigation points toward the wrong man—a local oysterman Blair knows didn't do it—she starts asking the questions the police aren't asking: who knew what Orin was planning, who had the means to stop him, and why does a missing length of dock rope keep leading her back to the same family name? Fueled by jalapeño cornbread, strong coffee, and the stubborn conviction that Pelican Harbor deserves the truth, Blair works the waterfront crowd the way she works a kitchen—quietly, methodically, and one conversation at a time.

Chowder, Clams, and Crime is the third book in the Pelican Harbor Patisserie Mystery series: warm, funny, and steeped in Gulf Coast atmosphere, with a cast of characters worth coming back to, a mystery worth solving, and one very large, very unhurried tabby cat who has absolutely no business being as helpful as he is.