To Have and to Kill
A Piper Donovan Mystery
By Mary Jane Clark
(William Morrow Paperbacks, Paperback, 9780062117168, 368pp.)
Publication Date: April 2012
Categories: Mystery & Detective - General, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths
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A struggling actress with no immediate prospects and a recently broken engagement, Piper Donovan needs to take stock of her life—so she moves back home with her parents in New Jersey and steps tentatively into the family bakery business. Soon she's creating a wedding cake for a friend, the star of a daytime television drama. But someone is ruthlessly determined that this wedding will never happen.
It begins with the horrific murder of the bride-to-be's costar—but a psychopathic wedding-crasher isn't about to stop there. Before Piper knows it, she's joining forces with FBI agent Jack Lombardi—a handsome neighbor with a soft spot for the inquisitive cake maker—to sift through the suspects and find a killer. But Piper's about to discover that it may be a lot hotter in the kitchen than she's able to handle. . . .
Mary Jane Clark worked at CBS News for nearly three decades. Her twelve KEY News media thrillers were inspired by that experience. Envisioning the Piper Donovan/wedding-cake mystery series, Mary Jane enrolled in cake-decorating classes and researched unique wedding locations. The daughter of an FBI agent and a mother who customized cakes for the neighborhood kids when she was growing up, Mary Jane has two grown children and splits her time between New Jersey and Florida. Currently, she is concocting her next novel.
“She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.”
-USA Today
The number of characters with motive for murder keeps you guessing,and the action-packed short chapters keep the story moving. You’ll also learn a little about cake decorating, and there’s a sweet surprise at the end.
-Library Journal
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