Reading: MY FAIR LATTE - Vickie Fee

Departing from her delightful Liv & Di in Dixie cozy mystery series, writer Vickie Fee has found an equally endearing - dare I say plucky? - heroine in ex-barista Halley Greer, who's recently inherited a broken-down old-fashioned movie palace in Utopia Springs, Arkansas from an uncle she hadn't seen since childhood. A lover of classic films, Halley - upon visiting the theater - makes the radical decision to keep and restore it (including the upstairs apartment, which gives her a new home at the same time), doing a quick, budget-friendly renovation to try and get the Art Deco theater close to its former glory as she can, in order to re-open it up as a wine and coffee bar that shows old movies. Making friends right off in a fellow business owner of an escape room, as well as an older couple who were solid with her uncle, Halley also discovers an enemy she didn't know she had when a man who'd previously tried to buy the theater from her uncle is found dead in his theater seat, in the middle of opening night for My Fair Lady! The cops settle on Halley as their #1 suspect when it's learned the dead man had also vandalized the theater during its renovation, forcing Utopia Springs's newest resident, working with her new neighbors and friends, to try and find motive and killer herself. As always, author Fee's skills at characterization make Halley and even the most minor secondary characters come fully to life from page one; something vital in a mystery where you need to care about people even when you suspect them. At first I was thrown by the victim's dying completely "off-screen" as it were, without even actually having an "on-screen" time in the novel to gauge his personality or how he acted/reacted with other characters, in order to gauge their motives as suspects - again, something normally vital in a mystery. But Halley's not-always-subtle (in a good way) investigation also give a face and voice to the dead man, making up for any "face-time" in the book, and not only was the killer's reveal a good surprise, but the way in which Fee plays out how and when Halley figures it all out - just in time to confront said killer - generates real tension/suspense on the page, as well (something lacking in some cozies these days). With the future of Henery Press's (publishers of this first-in-a-series) mystery lines in limbo, as of this writing, one hopes that common sense will prevail and readers like me - who've fallen for Halley and her friends already - won't have to wait long for book two in this charming new mystery series.  4.5/5 stars