After watching the Winter Olympics this year and hearing over and over again of the athletes, “She lives and trains in Colorado,” I knew that when I arrived in the Centennial State I wanted to find a book steeped in ski culture, or that at least features a ski lodge.

The mid-December day seemed made for skiing: the sun glittered off pristine slopes, the sky extended endlessly in a cloudless periwinkle dome, a light breeze carried fresh, sweet air off the peaks, and five inches of new powder topped an eighty-five inch base. – Diane Mott Davidson

Tough Cookie by Diane Mott Davidson is not only set in a ski town, but the accidental investigator, Goldy Schulz, is also a caterer and personal chef. Sparkling snow and ice-capped gingersnaps? Yes please.

Tough Cookie, number 9 in the Goldy Bear culinary mystery series set in Aspen Meadow, Colorado, takes place mainly in kitchens, on ski-lift gondolas, on the set of a cooking show shot in a ski lodge bistro, and on the avalanche-prone slopes of Killdeer, Colorado. A quick and easy read, it’s got murder and menus, reprobates and recipes, and it had me drooling the whole time. Mystery lovers will appreciate that Tough Cookie is only one in a larger series of Goldy Bear mysteries – all mouth-watering, all suspenseful, and all set in Colorado.

With at least 17 titles, including Sticks and Scones, The Main Corpse, and the New York Times bestseller Prime Cut, I imagine the series would show Aspen Meadow throughout the seasons, not just on the snow slopes of December, and would make for plenty of armchair travelling to the Rocky Mountains – and kitchens – of Colorado.