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Anthony Award and Macavity Award nominee for Best First Mystery
UNCOMMON GROUNDS
Five Star Mysteries
Hardcover $25.95
ISBN: 1-59414-195-9
Trade Paperback $13.95
ISBN 1-4104-0126-3
read an excerpt
reading group questions
Patricia Harper, the quintessential Brookhills Barbie, is dead, no doubt about it. Dead in a pool of milk in front of the espresso machine. And it's no accident.
In a town where you "dress," not just for success, but for a trip to the hardware store, who had hot-wired the espresso machine to froth one of the town's leading latte-loving citizens with 220 volts in her own gourmet coffee shop the day of its grand opening?
Maggy Thorsen, displaced PR executive turned desperate coffee maven, sets out to discover who killed one of her partners before their new business can go, quite literally, down the drain. As if that weren't challenge enough, she has to do it while keeping the town's tennis moms and senior citizens from ripping each other to shreds, and her third partner -- the one who's still alive -- both upright and out of jail.
Along the way, Maggy manages to incur the wrath of Brookhills' self-important new sheriff, Jake Pavlik, who apparently doesn't recognize the redeeming social value of a really good cup of coffee. She also stumbles over small town politics and unbridled ambition -- not to mention rampant infidelity -- on her way to a truth she's suddenly not all that sure she wants to know.
The opening day of a new coffeeshop is the setting for death by espresso in this bright debut.
The victim is Patricia Harper, lying in a puddle of milk after her electrocution by the brand-new espresso machine. All you need to know about Brookhills, Wisconsin (pop. 6,000), is that business at Uncommon Grounds isn't off a bit, and all you need to know about Patricia's partner, former p.r. exec Maggy Thorsen, is that Maggy, still smarting from a nasty divorce, is pleased about the crowds because she needs the money. There's much more to learn about Patricia, though, and county sheriff Jake Pavlik, newly arrived from the Chicago PD, is determined to poke into every corner of her life. Maybe the cad who tampered with the espresso maker was the coffeeshop's third partner, copywriter Caron Egan, seen secretly leaving the premises the previous afternoon; or Patricia's ex-lover, building inspector Roger Karsten; or realtor Sarah Kingston, the campaign manager who masterminded her one-vote loss to incumbent barber Rudy Fischer as town chairman. Maggy, in search of a Dr. Watson, isn't much of a detective, but she does just fine playing Watson to an unexpected Holmes. The killer is another pleasant surprise.
Maggy's amusingly matter-of-fact delivery helps lift her above the legion of plucky small-town divorcées who start business ventures, find corpses, take a jaundiced second look at their neighbors, and seek true love in the arms of the law.
from Kirkus Reviews
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What they're saying about UNCOMMON GROUNDS...
Denver Post:
February 15, 2006
food & dining Cookshelf: "Uncommon Grounds"
Look out, Diane Mott Davidson, there's a new writer with an appetite for murder.
Sandra Balzo's first novel, "Uncommon Grounds," takes the food/mystery genre into a Wisconsin coffeehouse. Davidson, who lives in Evergreen, has written 11 best sellers (including "Double Shot" and "Chopping Spree") featuring caterer and amateur detective Goldy Schulz.
Divorced like Schulz, Maggy Thorsen sinks her life savings into an upscale coffee shop only to find one of her partners dead in a puddle of unfrothed milk beside the espresso machine. Accompanied by her dog, Thorsen begins to investigate, in part, to remove her own name from the list of suspects:
"'I repaired to the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of fine red wine and opted for a sleeve of Ritz crackers and a can of spray cheese to go with it. Major food groups accounted for (fat and salt, alcohol and aerosol), I settled on the couch to call Caron. The phone rang four or five times before she finally answered.
"'Don't be silly, Maggy,' Caron said crisply. 'You've been watching too many TV shows. Patricia's death was an accident, pure and simple. Now I have to go.' She hung up.
"Hello? Had she been listening to anything I said? I sat for a second, then drained my wine glass and got up to go to the kitchen.
"Time to pull out the Chips Ahoy."
When Thorsen isn't munching on cookies, the growing attraction between her and the local sheriff is as hot as the espresso, and the activities of the town board as murky as cafe au lait. Just when I thought I had it figured out, the plot took a sharp turn that kept me guessing.
The wry voice of the main character, dead-on descriptions of tennis-and-a-latte set, and a sprinkle of religious tension make "Uncommon Grounds" as satisfying as a mid-morning triple espresso and a blueberry muffin.
- Kristen Browning-Blas
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"If Nancy Drew grew up, got married, ditched her no-good husband, and opened a coffeehouse, she'd be Maggy Thorsen. At times bitter as a double espresso, at others frothy as a latte, Maggy Thorsen is Everywoman-as-detective — but Everywoman with a better sense of humor and more nerve than most of us. This is a series I already want a refill on."
— SJ Rozan,
author of WINTER AND NIGHT
"Two or three times each year, an author's debut mystery novel absolutely 'hooks' the reader on page one. UNCOMMON GROUNDS is just that rare bird. Sandra Balzo uses a gourmet coffeeshop as the setting for a brutal homicide, and her story is not only a brilliant crossword puzzle but also an evocative essay on the world of espressos and lattes that will fascinate any lover of such delights. And Maggy Thorsen—an abandoned wife gamely trying to put her life back together—is a wonderfully tough and appealing heroine."
—Jeremiah Healy,
author of SPIRAL and TURNABOUT
Publishers Weekly: October 18, 2004
In her delightful debut, Balzo puts a 21st-century spin on the traditional
cozy, replacing tea with coffee as the comfort beverage of choice. Readers will
want to curl up with this winner with a cappuccino or maybe even a Viennese
cinnamon latte.
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"A lightning quick read. Sandra Balzo hits the ground running on the very first page and never lets up. Uncommon Grounds is a delicious grande latte of a book."
—Parnell Hall,
author of AND A PUZZLE TO DIE ON
"Uncommon Grounds is an uncommonly appealing debut. Great characters, great chemistry, and a story that never lets up. Sandra Balzo is clearly a writer to watch."
—Steve Hamilton,
author of ICE RUN
"Already an award-winning writer of short fiction, Sandra Balzo demonstrates
an affinity for the longer form, and an ability to be lively and funny without sacrificing the seriousness of her subject matter."
—Max Allan Collins,
author of ROAD TO PERDITION
Chicago Tribune: November 28, 2004:
Despite my attraction to the darker, colder kind of mysteries and thrillers,
I try to keep somewhere near the middle of my mind the words of Anthony
Boucher -- who invented taking crime fiction seriously -- when he wrote that "the
important distinction is not between the schools of the whodunit but between the
good and bad books whatever the school." That's why I'm especially pleased to
praise Sandra Balzo's first novel, "Uncommon Grounds," which might well be of
the cozy persuasion but is as wonderfully rich and sharply written as anything
going.
Balzo, whose first short story won the prestigious Robert L. Fish Award, has
imagined for her full-length debut the perfect modern equivalent of a British
tea shoppe--a new coffeehouse in Brookhills, a small Wisconsin town as full of
colorful, murderous lunatics as any Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers
landscape. And she has created an interesting lead character: Maggie Thorsen, a
public-relations expert whose husband has deserted her for a much younger dental
hygienist. Thorsen and two friends decide to start Uncommon Grounds, a
coffeehouse definitely more user-friendly than Starbucks, and all goes smoothly until
opening day--when one of the partners is found dead on the floor.
Cozies have their own set of rules, so Thorsen's investigation of her
partner's murder quickly takes on some comfortable rituals: Everyone in town has a
dark secret, there is physical danger lurking for Maggie, and there's even a
touch of possible romance with a new county sheriff. What moves Balzo's book high
above other writers who try to cover the same territory is a sharp and often
amusing skill that convinces us that this is real life, and that it matters.
--Dick Adler
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