A Jewel of a Crime book tour is through Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours and includes a giveaway. Enter below, share, comment, subscribe.
Book Details
A Jewel of a Crime: A Venus Bixby Mystery
Cozy Mystery
3rd in Series
Setting – Set in Chatham Crossing, a fictional whaling town between Providence and Cape Cod
Publisher : Aspetuck Publishing
Publication date : June 2, 2026
Print length : 322 pages
Paperback
ISBN-13 : 979-8986599564
ASIN : B0GVPVMJBS
Digital
ISBN-13 : 979-8986599571
ASIN : B0GRCG64BR
With green streaks in her hair and “Rock the Shamrock” polish on her nails, Venus Bixby is ready to trade dance recitals for airplane tickets.
After selling her dance studio, she has a brand-new plan: travel the world and recover stolen art. But life deals Venus an unexpected card. When she pulls back a curtain in the studio and finds the new owner dead on the couch, her next adventure becomes a very public nightmare.
With Chatham Crossing’s whisper mill in overdrive, Venus is now a prime suspect (because of course she is). In the process of clearing her name, she discovers her late husband secretly bought an emerald ring—and now it’s missing.
As burglaries ripple through this charming town, Venus wonders if the studio owner’s death and the missing emerald are part of the same glittering crime spree.Between gossiping neighbors, buried secrets, and one very inconvenient corpse, Venus will need sharp instincts—and maybe a touch of Irish luck—to solve the case before her passport dreams are grounded for good.
A Jewel of a Crime is book three in the Venus Bixby Mystery series. Expect cozy clues, small-town charm, amateur sleuthing, cats, and a mystery that keeps sparkling with surprises.
Includes cookie recipes and an oldies playlist!
About Valerie Taylor
Valerie Taylor considers herself an “average Jane.” She might remind you of a reclusive neighbor who’s secretly writing her next novel. Unlike many of the writers she admires, she doesn’t hold a degree in literature. Instead, she credits her love of storytelling to a steady diet of classic comedy and suspense.
She’s the award-winning author of the romantic comedy trilogy What’s Not Said, What’s Not True, and What’s Not Lost, as well as of the first two books in the Venus Bixby cozy mystery series, A Whale of a Murder and Switched at Death. Her affinity for humor and whodunits was shaped early on by watching Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, and The Twilight Zone.
When she’s not writing, Valerie enjoys oldies music, a passion sparked by hours growing up spent listening and dancing to Elvis Presley and The Beatles—and by proudly belonging to the Bobby Darin fan club.
Valerie lives close to her family in Connecticut.
Author Links
Website: https://www.ValerieTaylorAuthor.com
Facebook: https://Facebook.com/valerietaylorauthor
Instagram: https://instagram.com/ValerieETaylor
Substack: valtaylor.substack.com
Purchase Links
Murder, Murder Everywhere … Anywhere!
By Valerie Taylor
Before I wrote cozy mysteries, I published a romantic comedy trilogy. Then readers began suggesting something unexpected: “You should write a cozy.”
I wasn’t convinced. Romantic comedy felt natural to me. My characters practically wrote themselves, and plots unfolded with little planning. Mystery writing, however, required an entirely different skill set.
Still, the challenge intrigued me. So I immersed myself in the world of cozy mysteries—watching Murder, She Wrote, reading Agatha Christie, and studying the structure behind successful whodunits. That’s when the journey toward Venus Bixby and Chatham Crossing began.
Cozying up to cozies.
I learned cozies have five essential elements: a sleuth, setting, suspects, victim, and villain — with the sleuth and setting the most important.
Identifying my sleuth was painless. As it happened, Venus Bixby appeared as a secondary character in my third romcom, What’s Not Lost. I loved her so much that when I needed a mature, amateur sleuth, Venus rose up, fitting the part perfectly. Her nature, personality, and quirks existed somewhat already. And she lived south of Boston… with cats.
Chatham Crossing comes alive.
Creating the setting, though, was more challenging. Imagining the location and atmosphere of a fictional town like Cabot Cove or Midsomer was a critical first step. What to do? I recalled spending a lovely day in New Bedford, Massachusetts, when I retired in 2016. Inspired by this whaling village, its stores, restaurants, and especially the museum, I decided to set my cozy mystery in a fictional whaling town, situated between Providence and Cape Cod. And thus, Chatham Crossing was founded.
Then I needed to plan the community—to build cozy places where suspects would mill about daily while a murder occurred under their noses and a killer lurked among them.
Hmm. I could’ve followed the lead of many successful cozies. Many feature bakeries that are warm, comforting, relatable, and elicit sweet smells of warm bread. As customers buy their daily coffee, there’s plenty of time to gossip. Bookstores, too, are popular venues for cozies. Though quieter than bakeries, they attract interesting, often introspective clientele who often know who’s who and what’s what. Then there are historic houses, hiding old secrets or family rivalries; and retirement homes with elderly who have diverse careers and way too much time on their hands.
A novel idea.
All those settings are intriguing. But I wanted something novel, hopefully refreshing. I had an idea. In the debut mystery, A Whale of a Murder, Venus’s love of music was on full display. So she opened Oldies & Goodies, an oldies music store and candy store in Chatham Crossing’s historic district. Then with a nod to readers who love bakeries, Venus replaced the candy counters with cookies, along with their competitive bakers. Eventually, she opened a kitty day care center in Switched at Death.
Shouldn’t all of those locations be enough for a small town? Apparently not. Because in A Jewel of a Crime, while Venus flipped the cookie bakery into a bookstore, Chatham Crossing expanded its retail footprint. Harpoon Square, a strip mall, sprung up just northwest of town. The beauty salon, jeweler, optometrist and the dance studio in the historic district migrated there and were joined by a coffee shop, florist, and tattoo parlor. By coincidence—or was it coincidence?—all the business owners there were women, who called themselves The Moonstone Guild.
Whew! With plenty of places to commit murder, why did the murders occur at the whaling museum, the docks by the bay, and the dance studio? Again, I wanted the Venus Bixby Mysteries to stand apart—with the coziest places often associated with murder to be accomplices to, rather than, the actual murder scenes.
Finding a new comfort zone.
Looking back, I’m grateful those readers pushed me out of my comfort zone. What began as a challenge became an entirely new creative adventure—one that made Venus Bixby a star, introduced Chatham Crossing, and emersed me into a genre I now love writing as much as reading.
Do you prefer returning to a small town you love, or are you willing to cozy up to somewhere new?
TOUR PARTICIPANTS
June 19 – Sarcastically Yours, Jen – REVIEW
June 19 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
June 20 – Baseball, Books, and Banter podcast – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 21 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
June 22 – Books1987 – SPOTLIGHT
June 23 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 24 – Ascroft, eh? – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 25 – Salty Inspirations – AUTHOR GUEST POST
June 26 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
June 27 – Sarandipity’s – AUTHOR GUEST POST
June 28 – Guatemala Paula Loves to Read – SPOTLIGHT
June 29 – Romance Novel Giveaways – AUTHOR GUEST POST
June 30 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW
July 1 – Novels Alive – REVIEW
July 2 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
Giveaway
Prize – Two $10 Amazon gift cards.
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