Whitney Whitaker is a little surprised by her cousin Buck’s latest suggestion for their property-flipping business. He has his eye on a three-bedroom, two-bath property—the sweet spot for any house flipper, with its wide appeal to various house-hunting demographics. The only catch, so to speak, is that this promising new fixer-upper just happens to be a houseboat.

Our renovating duo have never tackled anything like this before but figure that their experience, plus YouTube, will help them figure it out as they go along. What they don’t expect is to be berthed next to an injured ladies’ man who seems to spend as much time dodging folks as he does hosting them on his party boat. Grant Hardisty has not only suffered a knee injury that’s made it impossible for him to keep working as a bartender but is also going through a protracted divorce. His most loyal friend seems to be his sweet, energetic dog, Jojo. Unfortunately, Grant’s injury means he can’t exercise Jojo as much as he should, leading to Whitney impulsively volunteering to help out. She quickly learns to regret this, though, as Grant seems to lean on her and Buck more and more for things he should probably be able to do for himself.

On the plus side, he will move his boat when asked. As Grant is prepping to fire up his grill one day while the Whitakers are busy priming and painting, Buck asks if he wouldn’t mind moving further out into the lake so that the smoke won’t smudge their work. Grant is amenable and heads out. Shortly after, his boat explodes in a tremendous fireball.

Shocked and heartsick, the Whitakers are very eager to cooperate with investigators, led by Deputy Fire Marshal Melanie Landreth. Unfortunately, Whitney’s own boyfriend, Homicide Detective Collin Flynn of the Metro Nashville Police Department, is forced to get involved when several people start showing up at his precinct, all confessing to Grant’s murder. Grant certainly wasn’t the most popular guy around, but could any of these people really have hated him enough to kill him in such a spectacular fashion? As the noose tightens around one of the self-confessed murderers, Whitney starts to suspect that not all is as it seems. Will she be able to help the police find the real killer before a murderer decides to get rid of her too?

This was another fun installment of the House-Flipper Mystery series, with humorous, believable banter and delightful relationships between the main cast members. The romances are all strictly G-rated, even as our characters prepare for Buck’s wedding to Whitney’s best friend, Collette. Crime-fighting wise, I really liked how Collin assured his sleuthing girlfriend that the police rely on the public’s help for tips in breaking cases, even as he worries over her safety. Fortunately, her inquisitiveness doesn’t lead to too much recklessness, in my opinion anyway.

There were two recipes included here, one for a drink and one for appropriately themed baked goods.

Life-Preserver Donuts

Ingredients

Box of white cake mix

2 cups applesauce

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons vanilla extract, separated (one for the cake mix and one for the icing)

16-ounce package of powdered sugar

Red food coloring

¼ cup water

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together cake mix, applesauce, ginger, and one tablespoon vanilla extract in a bowl until well blended. Spoon mixture into a donut pan. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until lightly brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the donuts comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow donuts to cool.

Mix powdered sugar with one teaspoon vanilla extract and ¼ cup water. Stir until well blended. Move half of the frosting into a separate bowl and add red food coloring. Stir until the red frosting is of uniform color.

Frost donuts in eight stripes of equal width, alternating white and red frosting.

In all honesty (and even before Ben Affleck’s adorable commercial recently aired), I haven’t been able to even look at cake donuts since a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru opened in my area. But I still wanted to stay on theme, so I decided to bake this as a bundt cake instead! The cake itself was very easy to put together. I did have to bake it at a slightly lower temperature for a longer time due to the different presentation I chose, but it came out tasting deliciously moist, with a wonderful apple-ginger flavor my entire family enjoyed.

The frosting helped, too, even if we accidentally bought pink food coloring instead of red. I kept adding more food coloring to the mix in hopes it would turn red, but it just grew a louder shade of pink. As is usually the case with recipes like these, the frosting is on the sweeter side, so feel free to adjust as necessary.

Next week, we cozy up to a trio of seasonal novellas from some of my favorite authors while whipping up one of my favorite dishes. Do join me!

See also: Cooking the Books: Yarn to Go by Betty Hechtman