Rating: 3/5
Genre: Murder mystery,
Tangential Interests: Cooking/food, knitting
Part of a Series? YES (A Cackleberry Club Mystery)
Review
This book jumped out of the shelf at me because of the title, which clearly screamed, "FOOD!" As a chef, I love food, and as a reader, I love mysteries, so this book promised to be the perfect blend of culinary mayhem. Alas, I found the dish a bit flat. The conclusion of the mystery seemed somewhat contrived. A well-written mystery should provide the reader some clue as to who might be the culprit, but this seemed to spring out of the blue, as if the writer decided mid-book who should be the culprit.
Character development was lacking, but I started with the second book in the series. Perhaps by starting with Eggs in Purgatory, I might gain a deeper appreciation for the people in the book. Secondary characters were of a cookie-cutter typology - too stereotypical and one-sided to be real.
On the plus side: the Cackleberry Club (the name of the restaurant in the book) boasts a knitting room for its guests and serves tea and scones and other delightful culinary creations. The setting of the book appealed to me greatly and made me wish I lived near such a place so that I could go there and knit, or sip tea and nibble a tart while reading my favorite book.
The author has also written a series of Tea Shop Mysteries as well as a series of Scrapbooking Mysteries. While I'm not a scrapbooker, the tea shop mysteries do appeal to me, so I might check out Death by Darjeeling, the first in the series of Tea Shop Mysteries.
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