Laura Childs has filled Bedeviled Eggs, the third book in her Cackleberry Club Mystery series, with a raft of small-town characters that make you yearn for simpler times. At the top of the list are Suzanne, Toni, and Petra, the wise-cracking (and egg cracking) entrepreneurial ladies of the Cackleberry Club café. Mornings they whip up Egg Strata and Slumbering Volcanoes, then work a double shift as amateur sleuths. Because in this go round, a read dating event ends with a mayoral candidate getting shot to death with a crossbow.
 
Two days later, a sheriff’s deputy is found murdered on the historical society’s Quilt Trail. As Suzanne, the Cackleberry Club’s founder, and Sheriff Doogie try to unravel clues, they have to contend with rescued dogs, a prison break, and very dirty politics.
 
Spirituality abounds, too, along with pulse-pounding action and recipes for breakfast egg pizza, crabby omelets, and hazelnut scones.