Betty Fletcher bakes the best sticky toffee pudding in the Cotswolds. She also recognises a professional kill when she sees one — especially when the technique was taught at the same facility where she learned hers.

When a flashy London property developer rolls into Bramblewick with blueprints to flatten the high street and replace it with a luxury spa resort, nobody is particularly charmed. When he turns up dead in a vat of golden syrup at the old mill, nobody is particularly surprised. The problem is that half the village had excellent reasons to want him gone — and Constable Puddifoot is making a list.

Betty needs to clear her friends before the handcuffs come out. But as she digs into the killing, she realises this wasn’t a crime of passion committed by an angry villager with a grudge and a shovel. The method is too clean. Too specific. The kind of work taught at only one place — a place Betty knows intimately, because she trained there.

Someone from her world has come to Bramblewick. And this time, they’re not just watching.

Major would like it noted that he identified the suspect before anyone else and was ignored, as usual.

The Man with the Golden Bun is the fourth book in The Baker’s Spy Mysteries — a cozy mystery series with a sharp edge. Perfect for fans of villages with too many suspects, grandmothers with classified pasts, and very good dogs who are always right.

Contains: a spectacularly sticky crime scene, an entire village with motive, one dangerously competent pensioner, a Cold War training ground nobody is supposed to mention, and absolutely no on-page violence (but quite a lot of threatening golden syrup).