Charm City Crab Puff by Pamela Kyel is a Salute Military Bookish Event pick #mystery #salutemilitary #mustread #giveaway
- N. N. Light
- 13 hours ago
- 5 min read
Title: Charm City Crab Puff
Author: Pamela Kyel
Genre: Mystery
Book Blurb:
Special Agent Laci Duvall, AFOSI, expects her life to be like her favorite beverage. Sweet and strong. So, what happens when someone throws a lemon in her sweet tea? She finds who did it and gets even. But fate drops a twisted tea bag when lead investigator and Charm City Heartthrob, Baltimore City Police Detective Antonio Desio walks into the room. He’s the one Laci abandoned to marry the dead man before them, and he bypasses tea for fine Italian wine. This case has the markings of a guzzling sweet tea straight-from-the-pitcher kind of day, and Laci and Desio learn they have to work together to solve it. She’ll deal with her feelings for Desio later.
Excerpt:
Men are a lot like sweet tea—they’re either too sweet, and you wonder what they’re hiding, or there’s not enough sugar, and you never finished them. Not to mention when someone did the insane thing of adding lemon. I have met enough sweet tea men with too much lemon to last a lifetime.
The current lemon in the sweet tea was my ex-husband. Zach never spilled his secrets when we married, and a visit to the Baltimore Medical Examiner’s Office would soon tell me if his days of keeping secrets were over.
I yanked open the door to the last room in the hallway and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of formaldehyde. And what was that? Cookies? A scan of the room revealed the source of the formaldehyde, but I couldn’t place the cookies—then the coroner greeted me from his desk in the corner. His mouth held half a cookie and the hand he waved with had a plastic bottle of milk in it. The two smells together were enough to turn my already weak stomach.
The partially covered body on the table caught my eye next, and I knew right away it was my ex-husband. I slapped my hand across my mouth to cover my Sulphur burp, and instead of returning the coroner’s greeting, I about-faced and ran to the women’s bathroom at the other end of the hall.
As Special Agent Laci Duvall for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, I have seen the inside of more bathrooms than I like. My job constantly challenged the strength of my stomach, and admittedly—dead people made me sick.
The bathroom door bounced against the wall to my left when I pushed my way inside—revealing more stainless steel. At the sink, I splashed my face with tepid water and rinsed out my mouth while I drifted in a sea of memories and chrome.
The footsteps in the hallway reminded me where I was, and I stepped into a stall behind me—I didn’t need an audience. I rolled my forehead across the door and pinched my eyes shut, trying to block out Zach on the table. My distorted reflection on the door stared back at me while I lowered myself to the toilet.
“What the hell happened, Zach?” I asked.
The last time I saw my ex, we were signing divorce papers. Which was fifteen or so years ago—I think. We were married for five years, and together maybe three and a half of those five. After that, we moved from our failed marriage to our own lives, and I never expected to see him again.
Shit. I needed to get back to the autopsy room. I left my hideout and made the trek back down the hallway—my boots thudding on the floor echoed off the walls and into my head. I couldn’t believe I left my tea in the car.
Someone fired up the morgue lights while I was gone, and they blinded me the second I opened the door. I threw my hands over my face, and it slammed shut. A voice inside apologized, and the door opened.
Blinking through the haze—the man holding the door stopped me in my tracks.
“Laci?” The suit asked.
“Antonio?” I asked at the same time. Yep, that was him, alright. I wasn’t ready to see him, so, of course, he showed up. He didn’t know I was back, and I wasn’t ready for him to know I was back—so much for that idea.
Baltimore City Police Detective Antonio Desio. Charm City heartthrob and the only man I’ve ever loved. Wow, the years had been good to him. My stomach took that as a sign and rebelled again. Who knew seeing my ex-boyfriend again after twenty years would affect me this way? With an effort of will, I turned from Desio toward the center of the room where the body lay. Desio and I reached the table at the same moment, and I stared at Zach spread before us.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
When the bile rose in my throat, I turned to breathe in air that wasn’t hovering over my dead ex. But instead of fresh air, I got a whiff of whatever cologne Antonio was wearing, and I gagged. There wasn’t enough sweet tea in the whole world for a situation like this.
“The deceased was fo—”
“Zach.” I interrupted the coroner mid-sentence.
He glanced in confusion at Desio, who stood by my elbow, and then looked back at me. “What?” he asked.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.” I reached over Zach. “Special Agent Laci Duvall, AFOSI. This man is Zach Wheaton. More specifically, he is Special Agent Zach Wheaton, Air Force Office of Special Investigation. My ex-husband.”
Antonio’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and thoughts raced across his face. I knew he was putting it all together and coming up with the correct conclusion.
“Ex-husband?” Desio asked.
“Dr. Ethan Mann.” He hesitated, but then his hand met mine. “Is Mr. Wheaton married?”
“As far as I know, he is.” I turned to Desio. “Did your people look for her?”
“I didn’t even know she existed, so no,” he said. “Do you know her?”
“Yeah, Zach and I weren’t that close.” I turned back to Dr. Mann. “I definitely wasn’t close to his wife. Did you only need me to ID the body? That’s what they told me over the phone.”
“So, you’re positively identifying this man as Special Agent Zach Wheaton?” Dr. Mann asked.
I took another look at the body with the sheet pulled to the chin. The air conditioning in the room ruffled his hair, and a shiver ran through me. There was no more tan from the summers we shared. Instead, he was pasty gray with every bit of life drained from him. I nodded.
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What makes your featured book a must-read?
It’s a must read because we’re flipping the script on military romance—this time, the woman’s in uniform, the guy is a suspect, and no one needs rescuing. No damsels. No distress. Just murder, motive, and Major Duvall.
Giveaway –
Enter to win a $20 Amazon gift card:
Open Internationally.
Runs May 20 – May 28, 2025.
Winner will be drawn on May 29, 2025.
Author Biography:
Award-winning Pamela Kyel was born and raised in Edgewood, Maryland—north of Charm City. It’s a running joke when you live near a large, well-known city—you tell people that’s where you’re from. So, unofficially, she’s from Baltimore! Since her spouse’s retirement from the military, they call Wisconsin home, where they have two daughters and two cats, Daisy and Ernie. You can follow along with her on her website, www.pamelakyel.com
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