"If you respect the process, you could end up with perfection."
Hello everyone!
That's right, if you know me, then you know that detective stories are among some of my favourites - and that Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot take the cake, with Sherlock Holmes either right there with them or close behind, depending on my mood.
Tess Gerritsen is also an author that I truly enjoy, so can you see a trend forming here?
A while back - this is now probably a few years back, actually - I very accidentally ran into a series that Hallmark Movies & Mysteries did called Murder, She Baked.
I was originally enticed into watching because of its male lead, but stayed for the adorable stories.
They rebranded into Hannah Swensen Mysteries and have just released its second installment out into the world in this new series.
Which means that we got to put our thinking caps on, everyone! Because it's time to solve a murder, and not just any kind, but a Carrot Cake Murder.
Links to previous related posts can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual - and yes, this includes ALL movies from Murder, She Baked, as well as the Hannah Swensen predecessor.
We check back with all our favourites in Eden Lake (though I have to agree with a lot of other reviewers online that I miss the original small-town feel, because the new sets look like they filmed in a much bigger area and it's all so much more modern and sleek and just ... feels off against the small community thing, you know?), beginning and ending with the baker.
Hannah (Alison Sweeney) continues running The Cookie Jar and is currently helping Norman (Gabriel Hogan) organize a surprise birthday party for his mother, which does not in fact go through, because apparently Norman's family life is in shambles, or something.
Hannah's mom does finally see that Norman seems to be dating someone, which upsets her for some reason we can't identity other than Hallmark pushing the ridiculous agenda of a mother being way too pushy and controlling of her children's lives. Hannah has been engaged to Mike (Cameron Mathison) for literal YEARS now, it's not like she's suddenly going to start dating the dentist! Come on, mom.
And also, come on Hannah, you need to stop trying to hurt her feelings and start being reasonable. No mother should be allowed that kind of illusion without a smack upside the head!
Anyway, as the party winds down, Hannah and Norman carry some things back to the bakery when they hear an explosion in a building that's been a high point of contention lately (and which Norman's girlfriend will be defending in due process, actually), leading to the discovery of a body in the old elevator shaft.
This is then of course Mike's department, though I'll admit that the police of Eden Lake are very weird. They have a body, but aren't all that worried about who he is, and seem to figure out his identity more as a fluke rather than design (it's a thief they couldn't tie to a heist back in the day, and I mean way back, in 1995), and then for some inexplicable reason also don't want to investigate how he died?
The sheriff's argument is that the ME can't determine any injuries which might have occurred BEFORE the explosion in the elevator shaft ... but completely overlooks that the body was wrapped in tarp and left in the shaft in the first place?
I don't know, it's weird lol, and mostly just a contrivance so Hannah can put her sleuthing cap on. Mike and she discover evidence in the shaft: a piece of fabric, a belt chain, and some keys they don't have any idea who they might belong to.
Now, you have to understand something though: Mike as a detective needs to be careful. He can't just run an investigation off the books, which is something Hannah should have clocked into by now, seven movies in. His boss warns him about it, too (same boss who somehow thinks that the body mummified itself), although they apparently work it out later so that Hannah is ... allowed to continue, as long as Mike tags along to make sure the police are kept in the loop?
This is a bizarre choice, in more ways than one, I'll admit. It's a very, very convoluted plot which will lead to a dramatically bitchy conclusion, and I'll tell you about it in a minute.
Back to the case at hand, Hannah asks around, meeting the dead man's wife who now has a salon in a different city (the money for which suddenly popped up after his death), the guy's old partner, whose son warns her off, and chats a little bit with a fellow restaurant owner who ends up saving her life.
Because, well, she nearly gets crushed by falling concrete blocks in that condemned building while she's sleuthing about, and he saves her. Of course there's the added mystery of who HE is in the end, as it turns out his social security number belongs to a dead guy, and they eventually find his niece to bring her over since the man's in a coma. Seems that his brother got drunk way back when and hit someone with a car, but couldn't run, so our guy ran instead, and hasn't seen his family since.
Leaving the weirdness of that aside, Hannah has at least one other near brush with death when Mike figures out someone set her porch light to electrocute her, so he has her (and her sister) stay with their mother, who sheds insight into that piece of fabric they found, saying it's a hem from a female pant leg.
The suspect pool now includes the old partner AND the ex wife, because the restaurant owner's been cleared, but then Hannah decides she's going to be testing out the key set they found.
See, during a little bit of back-and-forth, it turns out the keys aren't over twenty years old like they initially suspected - they're fairly modern, which means they belong to the killer. This eventually leads Hannah and Mike to the old accomplice, who quickly confesses to the murder and is carted away by the backup Mike hastily arranged to come meet them - AS ANY GOOD COP DOES, DUH.
Of course, this show then takes a turn for the worst because, a, not only has Hannah's IQ lowered so she didn't even clock into the fact she was putting Mike into an impossible position with her hell-bent desire to solve this case (not to mention his FEELINGS), but b, she somehow didn't think that the police were going to show up OR that Mike was, you know, going to keep talking to his boss.
It's like whoever was writing this script left all logic by the wayside, because not only would all of Hannah's evidence been INADMISSIBLE IN COURT if Mike hadn't been around to lend it credibility, but she literally has NO BUSINESS pushing as much as she does. She had no personal stake in this murder either!
But of course, drama llama that she is, she's offended and breaks off the engagement, bemoaning her fate, then Hallmark does Mike a second injustice by having HER figure out the old thief was just protecting his kid (not counting the fact that the kid would have been about 12 judging by the actor they hired but, you know).
I said it was the kid as soon as the old guy was taken into custody, because he caved too quickly. But anyway, turns out that the murder itself was an accident because the kid and the victim got into an argument about shares of spoils, and said kid didn't even use his own share in the end, leaving it for the wife instead, but, woe is him, he's off to prison anyway.
Hannah still can't see further than the tip of her nose no matter what Mike says because, as I mentioned, all reason and logic have abandoned her, so Mike delivers a huge cat tree for her despondent cat that for some reason doesn't like him in this movie while I have a pretty good hunch that same cat kinda liked him in older ones?
Anyway, that's where the movie ends, the two are still broken up, the mom will PROBABLY try and set her up with the dentist again because she's never been supportive of this relationship, and all in all the behaviour of our heroine belongs to a twenty-something girl with no idea how the world works rather than a forty-something, or late thirties something woman who owns her own business.
I'm sad for the character regression, to be honest, and to the completely bonkers plotline that was only there to drive this breakup decision. Hannah, while quirky and adorable in the first installments of the series, now just comes off as pushy and disregarding of anyone else at all costs, no matter who she might hurt in the process.
I don't even want to know how many laws she actually broke.
Anyway, the series will supposedly continue, so there's sure to be a return of the stupid love triangle before Mike and Hannah finally tie the knot, though at this point Mike deserves someone better. His only crime in this movie was that he didn't tell Hannah he was relaying information to his boss - which, in all honesty, she should have either asked about more forcefully (like about EVERYTHING ELSE) or clocked in on her own.
But I really, really didn't like this. It's a bad take. That's all I'm going to say.
xx
*images and video not mine
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