Molten Death is a quick and entertaining cozy mystery, with a lovely bonus of super yummy-sounding recipes at the end. Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen are in Hawai’i to celebrate Valerie’s upcoming 60th birthday and also provide a welcome distraction from Valerie’s grief over the recent death of her brother.

While exploring a volcano early one morning, Valerie sees someone — or more accurately, their boot and part of their leg — being consumed by lava. Who was it? How did they end up in the lava? And, in the absence of proof, how can Valerie even convince authorities that someone was actually killed?

The mystery was pretty good. Valerie’s investigation takes her to lots of potential leads: a men’s hula class, a small-time pot dealer, and even a minor foray into a spate of recent avocado thefts! There’s also an ongoing dispute between local residents and an industrial developer who wants to build more plants, and a local advocacy group inspired by stories of the goddess Pele. I actually found the big reveal to be really sad. And perhaps a testament to how I’ll never be a detective myself, I wasn’t fond that Valerie used a suspect’s naivete (okay, stupidity) in a vulnerable moment to get their surname and contact info for the police. I get it; justice must be done. But man, that felt rather cold.

Honestly, I also really wish I were a scientist or at least had more scientific knowledge (seismology? geology? volcano-logy?). Even more than the actual whodunnit, the natural environs of Hawai’i loomed large in this novel. An earthquake added to a tension as Valerie and Kristen looked for clues, and full-scale natural disaster set the scene for the climactic big reveal. (I’m not sure what happened exactly, but there was lava and boiling water and fissures appearing in the ground, and some residents were unfortunately displaced as a result.) Are such events really so common in Hawai’i?! (Near the end, Valerie and Kristen’s Hawai’ian friend teases them about the timing of their visit, because a disaster of that scale last happened decades ago, so I’m hoping the author just played up these elements for dramatic effect.)

Beyond that, I really enjoyed Valerie as a series lead. I love that she turns sixty in this novel; I see so many cozy mysteries starring women in their 20s or early 30s and it’s awesome seeing a sixty-year-old woman solving murders in her retirement. More 60-year-olds in cozy mysteries, please and thank you!

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Thank you to Severn House for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.