Heavenly Pleasures

Heavenly Pleasures is the second Corinna Chapman novel and the book where Kerry Greenwood settles the series into its rhythm. The setup is a Melbourne chocolate shop in Corinna's building called Insula whose customers are being poisoned by tampered truffles. The case eventually involves the Greek Orthodox church next door, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a half-dozen of the Insula tenants who have become Greenwood's ensemble.

Greenwood's great strength in the Corinna books is the chosen-family texture. Corinna's relationship with Daniel (the ex-Mossad social worker), the cathedral-organist tenant, the building's teenage runners and bakery staff, all carry the kind of patient long-form attention that the cozy form rarely allows. The food writing is consistently excellent.

The case resolves cleanly. Four stars. The Corinna series is the more emotionally serious of Greenwood's two long sequences, and Heavenly Pleasures is a clean entry to it. Recommended.