Brewed, Crude and Tattooed (Maggy Thorsen Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Sandra Balzo (Author)

Book Description

Series: Maggy Thorsen Mysteries | Publication Date: June 1, 2009

The new Maggy Thorsen coffee-house mystery - Maggy Thorsen, co-owner of the Brookhills coffee-house Uncommon Grounds, is trapped in a shopping mall by a snow storm which cuts the electricity and phone lines. She finds the body of Way Benson, a local developer and owner of the mall. Maggy's discovery unearths other refugees of the storm and it seems that more than one of these people has a motive for killing the arrogant Way. Then there is another murder.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Near the start of Balzo's lively fourth Maggy Thorsen mystery (after 2008's Bean There, Done That), a sudden spring thundersnow traps Maggy and friends in Benson Plaza, the Brookhills, Wis., strip mall where Maggy rents space for her coffee shop, Uncommon Grounds. Cut off from all communication, with minimum light and no heat in her store, Maggy decides to seek help elsewhere in the plaza. In the snow she stumbles on the mall's landlord, Way Benson, with a hatchet or cleaver buried in his back. Since Way was threatening to evict Maggy and other Benson Plaza proprietors in order to sell the mall to a superstore chain, Benson had no lack of enemies. Murder suspects include the mall's barber, an elderly pharmacist, the lone worker at the Bible Store and the Vietnamese father and daughter with a food shop. Credible characters and a well-constructed plot compensate for Maggy's sometimes tedious deductive methods. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

When a major spring snowstorm hits Brookhills, WI, Maggy is stranded at the mall that houses her coffee shop. Of course there is a murder and lots of poking around into why the mall is going to be closed. Verdict: Nice fare for cozy readers. --Library Journal --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 188 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0727867350
• ISBN-13: 978-0727867353
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,550,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I turned to mystery writing after twenty years in corporate public relations, event management, and publicity in Milwaukee.

My books are set in a gourmet coffee shop and feature Maggy Thorsen, a down-sized PR person. (Go figure.) In the first book, UNCOMMON GROUNDS, Maggy arrives at the store the morning of their grand opening only to find one of her partners dead in a pool of skim milk in front of the espresso machine. I'm told the books are funny. There are six more Maggy Thorsen mysteries out: GROUNDS FOR MURDER; BEAN THERE, DONE THAT; BREWED, CRUDE and TATTOOED; FROM THE GROUNDS UP; A CUP of JO; and TRIPLE SHOT.

RUNNING ON EMPTY, the first book in a second series (to alternate with the Maggy books), was released in April and is set in the popular vacation destination of North Carolina's High Country:

"It was the call every adult child dreads:
'AnnaLise? You should come home. Your mother Daisy went and drained all the blood out of poor Mrs Bradenham.'
Well, maybe not every adult child . . ."

The second book in the high country series, SOME ENDS ARE DEADER THAN OTHERS, will be out in 2012.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another solid entry in this series, September 30, 2010

By 

Cheryl A. Reynolds "Spuddie" (Minneapolis, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brewed, Crude and Tattooed (Maggy Thorsen) (Paperback)

In this great fourth Maggy Thorsen 'coffee house' mystery, an unexpected spring snowstorm leaves Maggy and several other tenants from the strip mall where her coffee shop Uncommon Grounds is located totally stranded and cut off from the outside world. So when the owner of the mall, Way Benson, is found stabbed in the back and his head mutilated by a snowblower, the suspect list is pretty small, since the opportunity for an outsider to have done it is minimal. Maggy, who's already seen her share of dead bodies, starts asking questions, trying to think like her boyfriend, Sheriff Jake Pavlik, who is nowhere around. Just about everyone who knew Way had good reason to hate the man, but trying to find someone who had not only motive but means and opportunity as well isn't going to be easy. And things get even more complicated when Way's ex-wife is also killed.

I am really enjoying this series a lot. It's cozy, but an edgy, funky kind of cozy where 'adult themes' and the occasional four-letter word aren't swept under the rug. Maggy has a wicked sense of humor and I find myself liking her very much--she's sort of a fish out of water, since the suburb she lives in is a gossipy, high-class enclave and Maggy is struggling to make ends meet and isn't so worried about what the Joneses think of her.

I think I especially liked this entry in the series because the boyfriend wasn't around so the romancey bits which I often find annoying weren't there at all in this one. I have to admit that the little bit of 'love interest' in this series isn't ever intrusive though, and it doesn't take over the whole story line, so kudos to the author for that, too! A mystery that's actually a mystery instead of a romance in disguise! Imagine that!

4.0 out of 5 stars It's fun watching this author mature, December 22, 2010

By 

J Davis (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brewed, Crude and Tattooed (Maggy Thorsen) (Paperback)

This is the fourth novel in the Maggy Thorsen mystery series. I am enjoying watching the author mature as a writer. The earliest novels in the series were almost too light-weight for my taste; characters were rather shallow and the romance was amateurish. But with each successive novel, the author has improved. The plots become more complicated, the characters are fleshed out, and the reader develops a relationship with the characters. This mystery is "scarier" than the others so far. People just keep on dying and you wonder if a main character might be next. In this story, a freak spring snowstorm strands a group of tenants and others in the strip mall where Maggy's coffee shop is located. Slowly, over the course of a day, three of them are murdered and Maggy needs to figure out who the killer is before another in the group dies.