How Sweet It Is

Joanne Fluke whips up a kitchen full of clever culinary mysteries.

- Oline H. Cogdill

You might say a cookie changed Joanne Fluke’s life. A big, homemade cookie bursting with chocolate chips. Not too sweet, definitely not tart. Soft and moist when you bite into it. But something was missing that day more than 25 years ago as she was making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies for her sons: oatmeal.

As her sons Hans and Rudy pointed out, she did have cornflakes because she had stocked up on several kinds of cereal, anticipating their visit. So those chocolate chip oatmeal cookies became Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies and a tradition was born.

Now those same Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies are a major part of Fluke’s book tours for her novels about baker and sleuth Hannah Swensen. Fluke has baked more than 600,000 Chocolate Chip Crunch cookies to share with readers at her book signings over the years. The tradition began with the first Hannah Swensen novel, the aptly named Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, which came out in 2001.

As popular as those cookies have become among readers, Fluke’s stories about the Minnesota baker are what bring people to her books. It takes more than cookies to sustain Fluke’s series with sales topping more than 4 million. Her novella Christmas Caramel Murder is her holiday offering for 2016, and the delicious sounding Banana Cream Pie Murder, her 21st Hannah novel, will be published in February 2017. And it takes more than chocolate chips to put her novels on the New York Times Best Sellers List, where Fluke’s last 12 Hannah Swensen novels have landed. Four have debuted on the top 10 hardcover list, and her cookbook made the New York Times top 10 bestselling cookbooks list. And it takes more than sugar and flour to attract Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel, which have filmed four TV movies based on her novels.