After accepting a job supplying chocolate from her aunt's luxury chocolate business to a party for unpopular defense attorney Clementine Ripley, Lee McKinney takes on a new job as detective when someone adds cyanide to a chocolate confection eaten by the hostess.

"From the bestselling author of The Chocolate Clown Corpse, it's murder, my sweet, for a chocolatier whose love of old crime films plunges her into a real-life murder where the motives aren't so black and white. The Warner Pier tourism board is kicking off its Tough Guys and Private Eyes film festival with The Maltese Falcon, and Lee Woodyard and her Aunt Nettie are preparing a delicious chocolate noir tie-in at TenHuis Chocolade. What Lee isn't prepared...

"When a house near Lee and Joe's home goes up for sale, the couple teams up with Lee's aunt and uncle, Nettie and Hogan, to buy it, remodel it, and resell it for a sweet profit. But after the owners of the house, the Baileys, accept their offer, a local developer, Richard "Spud" Dirk, suddenly swoops in with a higher one, and it seems their dreams might be snatched away. Lee, never as passionate about the plan as her husband and uncle, is anxious...