What do you get when you combine a wicked sense of humor with a love of happily-ever-after endings?

You get author Jennie Marts, if you’re lucky.

In December of 2012, Colorado Springs author Jennie Marts self-published her first book, Another Saturday Night and I Ain’t Got No Body. This combination romantic comedy/cozy mystery was the first in what would turn into the seven-book Page Turners series (two are seasonal novellas). In June of this year, her 35th book, Kill or Bee Killed, was published by Crooked Lane Books.

Jennie Marts

During the intervening years, Jennie attended the Pikes Peak Writers Conference where she met her agent and her editor. She got traditional deals, wrote 10 books published by Sourcebooks, and even wrote for Hallmark, a milestone in her career. (It meant getting her books in Targets all across the country.) Her books have been nominated for Colorado Book Awards, and she’s a USA-Today Bestselling Author. She achieved another goal in 2023 when her first Bee Keeping Mystery was released in hardback.

Readers first meet Bailey Briggs when she returns to her roots in the quaint (but fictional) Colorado mountain town of Humble Hills in Take the Honey and Run (a Colorado Book Award nominee). Bailey and her daughter have returned to her grandmother’s Honeybuzz Mountain Ranch, where Bailey grew up, to assist Granny Bee after she’s taken a bad fall. When the mayor is discovered dead after eating some of Granny Bee’s honey, Bailey is anxious to help clear her grandmother’s name.

The most recent book in the series, Kill or Bee Killed, revolves around the town’s annual Bee Festival, which includes a beauty pageant, a celebrity-hosted cooking contest that rivals anything the Food Network ever thought up, and a Bear Run where all the participants dress as bears. When the celebrity host winds up dead under mysterious circumstances, Bailey will go to any lengths to solve the murder and exonerate her best friend (and cooking contestant), Evie.

The story opens with Bailey and Evie trying to flee a biker bar, which isn’t even the funniest thing that happens. Granny Bee’s sisters, Marigold and Aster, decide they definitely aren’t too old enter the festival’s beauty pageant.  The cooking contest, with its bee-themed set, is the setting for a variety of mishaps and mayhem, and Bailey’s first love, now the town sheriff, would really like her to stop interfering with his investigation. Of course, she can’t resist helping, not realizing the danger she might be putting herself in.

Why bees as a theme? Jennie’s husband Todd is a certified beekeeper, who was responsible for bringing a working hive to the Bear Creek Nature Center here in Colorado Springs. Add Jennie’s penchant for what her husband calls cross-pollinating all her friend groups, and it seems inevitable that bees would show up in her work.

Marts leans skillfully into the cozy mystery trope of an amateur sleuth—without professional credentials—trying to solve a murder. Since it makes sense for the sleuth to have some sort of skills that will aid her endeavor, Marts opted to make Bailey Briggs a successful mystery author with rigorously researched plotlines. She has interesting connections in law enforcement and private security, and quickly befriends the local medical examiner as a resource when she discovers he’s a fan of her books.

Both of the books in the series have a strong comedic element that comes across as a “Lucy and Ethel” vibe. The word “madcap” comes to mind. There are grand gestures and small moments will make readers smile, snort or guffaw. What makes it even funnier is that the events unfold in such a way that they are totally believable, to the point where one could easily imagine ending up in the same situation without stretching credibility. Even if (spoiler for the first book) that means breaking into the mayor’s house with your bestie under the cover of darkness and getting your foot stuck in the toilet.

Bee and honey puns abound, especially when the story takes Bailey near her grandmother’s honey business. The book is full of luscious-sounding honey-based treats, for which readers can find recipes at the end of the books. Jennie and her mother experimented with all the recipes to get them just exactly right, and subjected the family to tasting several variations. Jennie especially recommends the Quesitos (cream cheese pastries) in the first book, although the Pecan Praline Honey Butter in the second book sounds like just the thing for Granny Bee’s cornbread.

In addition to the two series already mentioned, Jennie Marts has also created:

-The Lassiter Ranch series, involving small town Western romance
-The Cowboys of Creedence series, sweet, small town Colorado cowboy romance
-The Creedence Horse Rescue series, cowboys AND horses
-The Bannister Brothers series, romantic comedy hockey romances
-The Cotton Creek series, small town romantic comedies featuring Colorado adventures
-The Hearts of Montana series, combining humor with country romance