A Dish to Die For

Key West Food Critic Mystery Series, Book 12

By: Lucy Burdette

Narrated by: Laura Jennings

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, a food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking and finds him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.

When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.

But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

©2022 Lucy Burdette (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Fantastic series!!

I loved the pacing of the book. It was never boring or too slow.
The characters were not as well developed as I would have expected.

Surprised killer.

Description of different locations in the keys . Food she would make. Restaurants with water views. Difference in the ingredients from the past to now.

Fell flat for me.

Initially I enjoyed this story, twee as it is, however the ending was a horrid overloaded mish-mash of PC issues. This totally took me out of the cozy comfort of this fantasy mystery.