A Shot of Malice in the Cotswolds

A British Village Cozy Mystery with a Barista Sleuth, Hidden Secrets, and a Decades-Old Murder

By: J.A. Clarke

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When a retired detective opens a café in an idyllic Cotswold village, he expects to serve cappuccinos—not uncover a murder tied to a forgotten village ritual and a death buried for thirty years.

Former London detective Clay Whitmore came to the honey-stone village of Bramblethorpe to escape two things: paperwork and memories. Trading interrogations for espresso shots, he opens a tiny café called Espresso Yourself in the village square and hopes the loudest drama in his new life will be whether locals prefer flat whites or tea.

Instead, business is as cold as the autumn rain—until a mysterious customer leaves behind an antique carved figurine of a fox clutching a silver acorn.

The object is soon identified as one of the lost tokens from the village’s long-abandoned Harvest Covenant, an annual ceremony that once bound Bramblethorpe’s founding families in loyalty and secrecy. The figurine revives old rivalries, whispered betrayals, and memories of a suspicious death everyone agreed to forget.

When local historian Edmund Pritchard is found dead during the Harvest Fayre, Clay realizes the figurine was a warning—and that someone is willing to kill to keep the past buried.

With the help of sharp-tongued florist Tessa Bell, nosy customers, and an opinionated ginger cat who treats the café as his personal kingdom, Clay must untangle decades of grudges before the killer serves up another fatal secret.

Boring

I’m sure the author is a lovely person, but this book was trite, predictable, and not engaging at all. The “Virtual Voice” didn’t help either. I don’t like to be so negative, but I was very disappointed.