Hannah \u201cCookie\u201d Cooke is a New England\u2013based interior designer whose two specialties are constructing painstaking scale models of crime scenes like the Lizzie Borden house, which doesn\u2019t pay much, and restoring upscale houses, which pays a lot more. Her business, the Ministry of the Interior, gets a commission from neurosurgeon Chuck Halsey and his wife, Lana, founder of Lana Pura home textiles, which is challenging from the get-go. Lana\u2019s determination to enlarge the house\u2019s kitchen is thwarted by the placement of its chimney, which can\u2019t be touched because it\u2019s integral to the whole structure. Together with mason Harry Deluca, who has a complicated history with her, Cookie devises a workaround, but it doesn\u2019t work well enough to prevent the kitchen from filling with smoke. None of this bothers Chuck, whose affair with Cookie ends when he\u2019s found stuffed into the chimney and burned to death after his housewarming party. Will Cookie ever get another job? Absolutely: hospital Communications Director Wendy Teller insists she update the office of her husband, psychiatrist Simon Teller. Simon himself has no interest in the project, but he\u2019s definitely interested in Cookie. As Cookie\u2019s unsettlingly adulterous pattern solidifies, the ensuing complications extend from a second death to an international drug smuggling scheme to a reopening of the Lizzie Borden case. Some readers will feel exalted and uplifted by these wide horizons; others will merely feel baffled.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hannah \u201cCookie\u201d Cooke is a New England\u2013based interior designer whose two specialties are constructing painstaking scale models of crime scenes like the Lizzie Borden house, which doesn\u2019t pay much, and restoring upscale houses, which pays a lot more. Her business, the Ministry of the Interior, gets a commission from neurosurgeon Chuck Halsey and his wife, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}