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JANUARY - FEBRUARY REVIEWS STATE
OF THE ONION
End of story, right? Except, before the Secret
Service agents catch up, the man tells her he has to warn the President. But, warn him about what? The agents are
close-lipped. And Olivia’s romantic interest tells her to stay out of the way.
Still, it is hard to stay away when the mysterious
foreigner, whom she assumes is pacing a jail cell, calls her and asks her to
meet him. And when the man, Naveen, is murdered right in front of her, she
becomes a target of the infamous International criminal Chameleon. Now, the only things facing Olivia are the
competition for the position as Executive White House Chef, creating a menu for
an impromptu White House State luncheon and staying alive. Julie Hyzy had me from “Jello” on this one.
Okay, that’s a bit obtuse, but this culinary mystery hits the ground at a dead
run and doesn’t let up until the final page. The characters are masterfully
drawn and fleshed out. The reader is tempted to hiss every time one of her
villains (and there are several) appears on a page. STATE
OF THE ONION is the first in Hyzy’s White House Chef mystery series. The
conclusion is unexpected, and truly satisfying even without the Presidential
recipes Hyzy puts at the book’s end. The only thing wrong with this
page-turner? It ended. More, Ms. Hyzy, more!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. NOVEMBER - DECEMBER REVIEWS A
CAROL FOR A CORPSE There
is no room at the inn…the new inn in town, that is. There’s plenty of room
at the 300-year-old Inn at The TV
crew shows up, replete with cameramen, set decorators, producers and a witch of
a diva, Lydia Kingsbury, whose husband is the head honcho. And to Meg and
Quill’s dismay, There is
quite a stir at the inn already when Zeke Kingsbury creates even more news.
He buys out a local trailer park at a million dollars a head. How can you
top that act? By showing up dead at
the bottom of the inn’s ski trail…which is what Zeke does. The mogul, and
the deal, are dead. Now Lydia’s plans include suing her former classmates for everything they have. But the
clues say Kingsbury was murdered, and amateur sleuths Meg and Quill set out to
solve the mystery. Who had a motive to “sleigh” Kingsbury? The answer is,
nearly everybody, and the sisters must find the killer before they lose their
shirts to the bank and the inn is out. A CAROL FOR A CORPSE is the fifteenth of Claudia Bishop’s Hemlock Falls Mystery Series. Her characters are loopy and fun. Her plot, though, is decidedly predictable. I knew “who-done-it” three pages past the murder. That leaves a dilemma for the reader. Is there enough fun to make up for the lack of suspense? Knowing the destination, is it worth the trip? I thought so. RECOMMENDED. -
Caryl Harvey GROUNDS
FOR MURDER Maggie
Thorsen is not having a great day. Newly divorced, her fledgling enterprise,
Uncommon Grounds, isn’t exactly in the black. The coffee house is losing
business to its rival HotWired. Customers are defecting. And now she has agreed
to be the head of the barista contest at the Java Ho Conference. Think Starbucks
on a fashion runway. The
contest is the highlight of the conference. Uncommon Grounds stands to gain a
lot of publicity from the exposure. And Maggie’s partner wants her to steal
the barista -- the coffee mixer -- from the competition. Marvin LaRoche, the
organizer, doesn’t suspect a thing. But when
Maggie and her friend Sarah walk out in front of the bleachers to announce the
winners at the conference, things start to go South. There is a stain on the
dazzling white table cloth, the table is off-kilter, the trophies are sliding,
and Marvin LaRoche is at the bottom of everything…literally. Dead.
Maggie is
the master of ceremonies. The one in charge. She knows just what to do: call
9-1-1. Someone
wanted the Coffee Magnate out of the picture, but who? Maggie rushes to solve
the mystery before the conference rushes to judgment. GROUNDS
FOR MURDER is
Balzo’s newest Maggie Thorsen mystery.
Though I had little interest in the internal rumblings of the coffee industry
and felt the plot “mugged” down a bit in places, the end was not what I
expected. - Caryl Harvey
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