This was the first cozy mystery that I genuinely liked. There was solid sleuthing shown which warmed my thriller loving heart. My first book by author Leslie Karst, though this was the fourth in the series, it was quite fun to follow Sally as she put on her thinking cap to find out who murdered her blind cousin Evelyn’s mom.

I loved the way the author had characterised Sally. She was a line cook in her own restaurant. She managed her work, her hobbies, her friends quite comfortably. This book dealt with the cut throat restaurant business where making money seemed extremely difficult. It was quite enlightening. Evelyn too had a great part in the book, she was shown to be quite an enterprising strong woman, who had heightened senses.

My niggles would be there are certain lines which indicated the past few books, which I had no idea about. Hence I couldn’t get a feel of their backstories. But that didn’t affect my reading as Sally kept her personal life quite separate from her investigation. Another point which made me smile, having not read the complete title, I came to know the main character’s name in chapter 9 when someone addresses her.

Overall, though a bit slow from my other books, but the good murder mystery more than made up for it. I quite enjoyed the interplay of familial relationships shown too.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and publisher Crooked Lane Books, and this is my journey into its pages, straight from the heart!!

All my reviews can be read here

Restaurateur Sally Solari’s cousin Evelyn may be blind, but she can see all too clearly that her chef mother’s death wasn’t an accidental overdose—she was murdered. Her dad persuades Sally to take in Evelyn whose mother has just died of a drug overdose.

Evelyn proves to be lots of fun and she’s a terrific cook. Back at the house she’d shared with her mom, Evelyn’s heightened sense of touch tells her that various objects—a bottle of cranberry juice, her grandfather’s jazz records—are out of place. She and her mom always kept things in the same place so Evelyn could find them. So she suspects that her mother’s death was neither accident nor suicide, no matter what the police believe.

The cousins’ sleuthing takes Sally and Evelyn into the world of macho commercial kitchens, and the cutthroat competitiveness that can flame up between chefs. In Leslie Karst’s scrumptious fourth Sally Solari mystery, Sally will have to chop a long list of suspects down to size or end up getting burned.

Publication Date: 7th March 2019

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books