Shot in the Dark

In Coyle’s well-crafted 17th Coffeehouse mystery (after 2017’s Dead Cold Brew), the Village Blend, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse, is doing a booming business, thanks to being listed as a great place to meet up with potential dates on a hot new dating app. One evening, a young woman brandishing a gun charges up to the coffeehouse’s lounge and threatens the life of a man whom she met through the app. Shots are fired, and the whole incident is captured on at least a dozen phones. Clare Cosi, the Village Blend’s manager, later goes to meet her former mother-in-law for a late dinner at a waterfront restaurant, where Clare discovers the body of a regular Village Blend customer floating in the river. Could the two incidents be connected? Coyle (the husband-and-wife team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini) serves up some tantalizing descriptions of the scents and flavors of coffee and assorted edibles, as well as musings on the dating scene in the digital age. This entry is sure to delight old fans and garner new ones. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune. (Apr.)