Series Spotlight #3 - Hannah Swensen Series by Joanne Fluke

As I think I have said a few times previously I love to read books in series and that love especially applies to crime books. For the most part I like my crime gritty and dark, something with a lot of pace and suspense but every now & then I like to read crime that is a little lighter. One of the series that hits the lighter note is the Hannah Swensen series by Joanne Fluke.

We first meet Hannah in Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder and on GoodReads she is described as

Joanne Fluke's dessert-baking, red-haired heroine whose gingersnaps are as tart as her comebacks, and whose penchant for solving crimes-one delicious clue at a time-has made her a bestselling favorite. 

Hannah Swensen, runs her own bakery, The Cookie Jar, in the small town of Lake Eden, Minnesota. In the very first book, Hannah, discovers a body outside the back of her bakery and fearing that the body will reflect badly on her cookies she sets about finding the killer herself. 

Pretty much every book in the series follows the same format. Hannah will inevitably find a dead body and will get mixed up in the search for the killer. Her sister Andrea, is married to the town policeman and is happily settled so this leaves, Hannah's mother, Delores with plenty of time on her hands to try & marry Hannah off. This leads to some very amusing story lines.

Hannah's love interests come in the form of town dentist, Norman Rhodes and hot police officer, Mike Kingston. Both try to win her over and both are very different men, I'm 15 books in & the love-triangle is still going strong. I'm still not decided on who I want Hannah to end up with.

Often I have worked out who the villain is before I have reached the end of the book but sometimes, Fluke surprises me. These books are a perfect cosy mystery and are great if you are looking for something lighter to read. A word of warning these books will make you long for cookies and other sweet things. All of the books have recipes included between chapters. After reading the first book back early in 2012 I commented that it was the 'perfect book for some light-hearted relief with a little bit of mystery thrown in'