Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperbook; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425259542; 9781541452084
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.99; $21.80; $2.99 Amazon
August 6, 2013
✮✮
The town of Jewel Bay, Montana - known as a Food Lovers' Village - is obsessed with homegrown and homemade Montana fare. So when Erin Murphy takes over her family's century-old general store, she turns it into a boutique market filled with local delicacies. But Erin's freshly booming business might go rotten when a former employee turns up dead...
Murphy's Mercantile, known as the Merc, has been a staple in Jewel Bay for over a hundred years. To celebrate their recent makeover as a gourmet food market, Erin has organized a town festival, Festa di Pasta, featuring the culinary goods of Jewel Bay's finest - including her mother Fresca's delicious Italian specialties.
But Erin's sweet success is soured when the shop's former manager, Claudette, is found dead behind the Merc on the Festa's opening night. With rival chef James Angelo stirring up rumors that Fresca's sauce recipes were stolen from Claudette, Erin's mother is under close scrutiny. Now Erin will have to hunt down some new suspects, or both her family and her store might wind up in hot water...
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Erin Murphy has returned home to Montana after many years away to help run her family business, Murphy's Mercantile. She's decided that the way to go to make it profitable is to carry items made in Montana, including her mother's own Italian recipes.
But first her mother is accused of stealing the recipes of an old friend, Claudette, who has hightailed it to Las Vegas with a local chiropractor; and even though Fresca (her mother) denies it, there are still rumors. Then, when Claudette suddenly returns - and is found dead behind the mercantile - the rumors are getting serious. Suddenly Fresca is the main suspect and Erin decides the only way to clear her mother (who refuses any help) is to find the killer herself. But will her investigation do more harm than good?
I honestly really wanted to like this book, and I tried...but I kept falling asleep every time I picked it up. I'm not sure why; usually I have no problem reading books straight through, and even managing to read one a day. But this one...
The characters were boring. The dialogue was boring. We never get to know anything at all about Claudette; there is only one small conversation between Erin and her where she tells Erin the rumors are false and how she found out the chiropractor was never in love with her. Then...she's dead. So we never get to engage with her at all - even though everyone says that she was wonderful, all I got to see was a crying, near-hysterical woman over a broken short-lived affair.
The detective in charge of the case is an old ex-friend of Erin's, and honestly, I finished the book because I wanted to see why they'd drifted apart after Erin's father's death, and it was a letdown. Also, I didn't understand why she felt the need to call her mother by her first name. Didn't she want customers to know they were related? Was she afraid of being accused of nepotism? It didn't make any sense. Many, many people work with their parents and call them Mom or Dad. It seemed ridiculous. If she wanted customers to know who created the recipes, just have the woman wear a name tag or something. Don't call your mother by her first name at work and then 'mom' at home. Good grief.
I think part of the problem is Erin is self-centered. She seems a bit snobbish, and so does her sister, Chiara. Also, there's just Too Much Detail about things that aren't important to the reader. It's hard to actually place, but the dialogue for one could be a little more interesting. (And honestly, who's going to join a Jam Club?)
In the end, the reason for the murder didn't really make any sense to me, so that's part of the reason the book fell flat. As it is, I always try to give the author a pass on the first in a new series, and I will read the next in the hope that it will improve.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Al-Dente-Village-Mystery/dp/0425259544/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2309424955
More on Leslie Budewitz's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/leslie-ann-budewitz/
No comments:
Post a Comment