Trick or Treat – Kerry Greenwood

Could Earthly Delights be run out of business? A franchised bakery’s opened just up the lane from Corinna and though their bread’s not a patch on hers, the customers are flocking to Best Fresh where muffins are two for $2, even if they are dry and crumbly. And young people are going mad near Lonsdale Street, although the agent can’t be isolated on tox tests, and what’s the connection with Jewish gold, stolen by the Nazis in Greece during the war?
At least Corinna has her friends, including Wiccan Meroe, who needs soul cakes baked for Samhain, and her beloved Daniel. Although Daniel seems to be living with a confident, impossibly tall, blonde ringleted woman named Georgiana, who seems to have designs not only Corinna’s boyfriend but also her bakery. And if it’s not Daniel sending her well chosen presents and anonymous letters of devotion, who is?
Only Kerry Greenwood could combine all these disparate (or, in the end, not so disparate) events into a coherent and thoroughly enjoyable whole. I did guess the cause of the wave of insanity fairly early on, but this in no way diminished my enjoyment of the book. As is so often the case with series, half the pleasure is revisiting old friends and seeing them develop, and in Jason (Corinna’s fifteen-year-old ex-addict assistant) Greenwood has created a fantastic character. Watching his nuanced relationship with Goss and Kylie (the shop girls) develop is even more interesting than Corinna and Daniel’s. Pure delight, and such a shame that it’ll be a good year before the next indulgence. - Alex

To see Lynn's review of Trick or Treat click here

The Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights; Heavenly Pleasures; Devil's Food; Trick or Treat; Forbidden Fruit; Cooking the Books

Earthly Delights – Kerry Greenwood

Corinna Chapman, accountant turned baker, is very happy with her second life - sure,she has to get up at 4AM five days a week, but the work day's done while all the office slaces are still tethered to their desks, she's her own boss, she gets to make delicious things all day (except the loathesome health bread that a sub-section of her usually discerning clientele insist upon) and she never has to wear kitten heels again.
One morning, arising as usual in the dead of night, Corinna shrugs into her usual baking outfit of a tracksuit, resurrects herself with coffee, and heads downstairs to her fabulous bakery in the heart of the city. When she opens the door to Calico Alley she finds the body of a young girl, pulseless and blue. Resuscitating the girl (with the aid of an ambulance crew and their Narcan) marks the beginning of a cascade of experiences that lead Corinna to see a very different side of Melbourne, and which brings love in to her life.
This is the first of four (thus far) Corinna novels - a heroine very different from the sleek Phryne of Greenwood's 1920's novels, she is a little less unattainable and a little more human. Not that I don't love Phryne, I do, but Corinna is more the mass of contradictions that every woman I know holds. She is also Reubenesque, usually self-accepting but not always, able to easily hold her own with her jerk of an ex, intelligent, self-sufficient and open.
The secondary characters are so wholly captured that they are in no way less than Corinna except for their page time (a concept I may have just coined - the literature version of screen time), the food is the descriptive equivalent of food porn, the plot is smart and complicated without being convoluted or frustrating, and the whole is pure reading pleasure. - Alex

The Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights; Heavenly Pleasures; Devil's Food; Trick or Treat; Forbidden Fruit; Cooking the Books

Cooking the Books - Kerry Greenwood

Corinna Chapman, baker par excellence and proprietor of Earthly Delights, is doing nothing during her holidays. Her trainee Jason has taken off to learn how to surf, her partner Daniel is busy tracking down corporate fiscal shenanigans, and her waif-like assistants Kylie and Goss are auditioning as extras on a new soap. Without care or responsibility, Corinna should be enjoying the down time, but she's bored.
Which is what allows her to succumb to the emotional blackmail of a former school mate, assisting her on the set of "Kiss the Bride" - coincidentally the same soap Kylie and Goss have got parts on.

There are so many delightful things about this series, from the oddments I flag for follow up (Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, the not safe for work song 'The Sexual Life of the Camel') and the meticulously seamless plot to the way traditionally-build Greenwood describes life as a fat woman

"But I haven't got long - I have a dinner date."
"You?" she asked with that touch of incredulity which flicks a fat woman on the raw. I resolved that I would try to do the Christian thing and forgive my enemoes, but that did not require me to turn the other cheek...
She had aged badly, looked haggard and lined. One advantage of being fat is that one does not wrinkly like the slim and gorgeous.

There's bullying, intrigue, a lion, high drama, a tiny bit of Doctor Who, a literary scavenger hunt, the tyranny of the thin-is-healthy obsessed, and bullying of all sorts. There's also the deep satisfaction of just desserts and righteous comeuppances, and the city of Melbourne as integral to the soul of the novel as a character:

The weather was temperate, which is a signal that it is about to change. In Melbourne, a city whose climate can only be called 'unstable'. If by unstable you mean that it is blowing a hot gale before lunch and raining like the Flood after lunch. This makes Melburnians flexible and agile. You have to be, to dodge he hailstones. Some of them are as big as tennis balls, I swear.

Not a breath of a lie! Greenwood's best book, and this is one of that predominant number, are so beautifully constructed, intricate and masterfully crafted that it is impossible to do them justice. It is a mystery greater than any Corinna or her 'twenties counterpart Phrynne have ever solved that she is not more greatly lauded and renown. - Alex the Fan Girl

The Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights; Heavenly Pleasures; Devil's Food; Trick or Treat; Forbidden Fruit; Cooking the Books

Devil’s Food – Kerry Greenwood

Baker Corinna Chapman’s a little disturbed when an order of monks (the Discarnate Brotherhood) devoted to the mortification of the flesh demand she make the worst bread even (no leavening, no salt, and it smells like sawdust). Food is, after all, one of life’s great pleasures. But her distress becomes a distant memory when Corinna’s confronted by her hippy mother, Starshine. Thoroughly wrapped up in each other, Corinna’s parents neglected her until she was rescued from the Nimbin commune by her grandparents, and seeing her brings back the bone deep cold and disapproval that marked her life until the age of five.
For once, Star’s come seeking help – Sunshine’s gone missing, and Star, only half a person on her own, can’t function without him. Well, Sun hasn’t so much gone missing as headed to the fleshpots of Melbourne to find more nubile company, but he has to be tracked down anyway. And that’s not the only mystery – at the new goth handout, Café Vlad Tepes, someone’s selling a bizarre concoction of contradictory herbs as a weight loss tea that comes within a hair’s breadth of killing Corinna’s diet-obsessed assistants, Goss and Kylie.
Greenwood goes from strength to strength – the characters, the wonderful resonance of Melbourne, the interweaving plot and the clarity of the writing make her books a better treat than one of Jason’s chocolate orgasm muffins. I know we’ve both raved about her before, at length no less, and I really have nothing new to add. Except to say that reading the Corinna books makes me feel assured, confident and attractive about being a fat woman, and delighted to be a Melburnian:

“It was one of the odd Melbourne days when early morning is bright and sunny, so that you need sunglasses for the glare. Late morning would bring clouds and by afternoon it would either be (1) raining or (2) freezing or (3) both. That’s why the sunnies and the mac are essential on any day in our great city, where there are four seasons in one day. If there were six seasons, there’d be six. It’s what makes Melburnians so quick on the uptake and resilient, able to adapt to change.”

- Alex

The Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights; Heavenly Pleasures; Devil's Food; Trick or Treat; Forbidden Fruit; Cooking the Books

Kerry Greenwood: Trick or Treat

Baker and amateur sleuth, Corinna Chapman is under a lot of pressure. Her livelihood is threatened by a franchise bakery opening at the end of her street. Her love life is threatened by a tall, gorgeous blonde who has just moved in with her boyfriend and has obvious designs on him. The neighbourhood is playing host to a dodgy coven of treasure hunting witches. And a new drug on the streets has crazy people regularly turning up on her doorstep.
Dealing with all of these challenges isn’t easy but Corinna is a strong and determined woman who will not let her world fall apart without a fight. She soon discovers that all of these events are tied up together in a very tangled web and with the help of her friends and the police she manages to unravel it and settle back into the comfortable life she has worked so hard to achieve.
This is the fourth book in this series and builds on earlier works. The cast remains basically the same, and though the story focuses on different secondary characters, we are given updates on our old friends from previous stories.
It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Greenwood’s work but this novel left me a little flat. The writing, as always, was superlative. (Let’s be honest, Kerry Greenwood at her worst would rival many an author at their best.) It was particular elements of the plot that I felt a little disappointed in.
Without spoilers I can’t give details but suffice to say as soon as the flour sack appeared it was obvious what was about to happen. (And if you just guessed sorry but the twist really is that obvious). I have seen this particular plot point used half a dozen times in the last decade in a number of different contexts. Perhaps it just made a strong impression on me but as soon as I mentioned it to Alex her mind went in the exactly the same direction. I had hoped that the point in question was going to be a red herring but sadly that wasn’t the case. And while its impact on the story was minor it was enough to take the shine off.
Still a reliably good read from a consistently good author-just not one of her best.-Lynn

For Alex's review of Trick or Treat click here

Heavenly Pleasures – Kerry Greenwood

Corinna's back in her second adventure - this time there are no vampires or bondage outfits (which I know I didn't allude to in the review below, but I couldn't include everything). However there is: the return of delicious Daniel, a scrumptious chocolate orgasm muffin, tampering at the Heavenly Pleasures gourmet chocolate shop, trips to restaurants outside the CBD (I have to check out a couple of places in Brunswick Street), a missing kitten and a missing girl, a mysterious new resident, bomb threats, bride kidnap and a very naughty boy pretending to be possessed.
For all praise see the below directly below this one. It's only because I can't dig out the third in the series from my boxes of unpacked books that I haven't splurged entirely and must wait until it shows up (or I can borrow it from the library) before I read both it and the newest installment, Trick or Treat. My Christmas present to myself. - Alex

The Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights; Heavenly Pleasures; Devil's Food; Trick or Treat; Forbidden Fruit; Cooking the Books