1. The Key West setting (it's snowing here! and I am determined to go visit Burdette's almost mythical location).
2. Newspaper writer, restaurant critic, and recipe tester Hayley Snow, an amateur sleuth who makes decisions that are smart and sometimes inspired -- and has the right kind of stubbornness to sit down with the somewhat out-of-balance kids at the local teen shelter to track a missing girl.
3. Visiting (on the pages) Ernest Hemingway's house and its feline residents -- more than once!
4. Deft handling of politics and persuasion within a local police force. It's not easy to be the amateur sleuth who keeps pushing for more investigations!
5. The recipes. Yes, it's true: the chocolate ganache recipe is in the back (that's cream + chocolate, mmm). But so is the one for the lime cupcakes that Hayley is making as the book opens, for the friend's wedding that's vulnerable to "issues" as crime steps in, and ... Nope, not going to spoil the plot. Get your own copy -- mine's acquiring some chocolate fragrance as I settle in to re-read certain choice pages (smile).
Thanks, "Lucy" -- a.k.a. Roberta Isleib. This was fun!
1 comment:
Amusing review - I enjoyed how you wrote this!
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