Crypt Suzette (A Five-Ingredient Mystery Book 6)

Author:  Maya Corrigan
Genre:   Mystery

Hardcover (LP); Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781432869274; 9781496722423
Kensington Publishing
288 Pages
$30.99; $7.99; $6.99 Amazon
August 27, 2019

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Suzette Cripps has been occupying a spare bedroom at Val's granddad's house while she takes classes in this Maryland Eastern Shore town -- but she's always seemed a little secretive and fearful, and any talk about her past is a closed book.

After winning the costume contest at the Halloween-themed bookstore party, Suzette is mowed down by a hit-and-run driver -- and Val and her grandfather start to wonder whether it was really an accident of ir someone was after Suzette.  Granddad is a little distracted by his new enterprise as a ghost-buster, but as Val talks to Suzette's coworkers and fellow creative writing students, she grows more convinced that the dead woman's demons weren't imaginary -- and that she needs to rip the mask off a killer...

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Val Deniston runs the Cool Down Cafe at the local health club, and also has side jobs catering small events.  When she's hired to cater a Halloween-themed party at a new bookstore, her grandfather's tenant, Suzanne Cripps, mentions how she'd like to enter.  But Val doesn't expect the entrants to be at each other's throats before the contest, nor that the next morning Suzette will be mowed down by a car and die.  While the chief of police think it was a mere accident, Val starts looking at Suzette's past and she's not so sure.  With the help of her grandfather, Val starts digging into the suspects, and discovers that more than one person could have had a motive; but Suzette was a decent person who didn't deserve her fate, and Val is determined to see someone pay for the crime...

I have to say that when I first started reading this book, one name in particular struck out at me.  Being a huge classic film fan (I own thousands of them), I was later happy to see that I wasn't the only one in the book who noticed it, and where it was from.  But I will say no more on that subject, since I don't want to ruin the book for others who might not know until it's pointed out.

That being said, I really enjoyed the book.  When I first started reading this series, I wasn't impressed.  But I'm glad that I stuck with it, since both Val's grandfather Don and Val herself have been growing throughout the series.  I am impressed at how far Don has come, and finally showing his granddaughter how much he loves and appreciates her; and that Val's bitterness toward what was her life has turned into happiness at what her life has become.  These are good things in a book.

But back to the plot: after Suzanne is killed, Val and her grandfather want to know why.  They start researching the people she worked with in her job as a hotel clerk, and also her co-writers in a writers' group.  What Val finds is disturbing on both counts.  But without any evidence, police chief Earl Yardley isn't going to go along with it, stating that it was probably an accident.

But along with that, Don has been hired to find out why things are missing from his clients' homes, and the person who owns the Title Wave bookstore, Dorothy Muir, is an old friend of Don's, but the same can't be said of her son, Bram.  He doesn't like the idea of hiring a caterer, and he seems harsh and stolid.  But is that because of his personality, or because he doesn't understand how small towns work?  At any rate, Val is about to find out.

When it becomes apparent that there's more to Suzanne's past that leads them to the point they now are, Val figures it out eventually, and when she does, it comes to a nice conclusion that wasn't really expected.  While rather sad at points, there's no reason for taking a life, and the ending leaves us looking forward to the next in the series.  I really enjoyed how all the threads eventually came together, and I do like the fact that Val never puts herself in harms' way (at least intentionally); and yet she manages to get to the bottom of things.  I also have to say that I'm glad the way the series is going and looking forward to reading the next one soon.

https://www.amazon.com/Crypt-Suzette-Five-Ingredient-Mystery-Corrigan/dp/1496722426/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3526740107

More on Maya Corrigan's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/maya-corrigan/

Scam Chowder (A Five-Ingredient Mystery #2)

Author:  Maya Corrigan
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book [Large Print Available]
ISBN # 9781617731402
Kensington Publishing
304 Pages
Various Prices; $6.99 Amazon
June 30, 2015

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Val Deniston loves the historic Chesapeake Bay town where she lives with her grandfather, the Codger Cook.  Running the fitness club's Cool Down Café -- and salvaging the five-ingredient dishes Granddad messes up -- keeps her busy.  She's used to his catastrophes in the kitchen, but not in the dining room...

Especially when one of his dinner party guests winds up face down in the chowder.  The demised diner apparently scammed Granddad's best buddy, and since the other dinner guests have suddenly clammed up, the police have all the ingredients to cook up a conviction for Granddad.  With his freedom -- and Val's café job -- on the line, Val is in a sweat trying to avert a catastrophe.  But dredging up old secrets might just be a recipe for murder...

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Val Deniston moved in with her grandfather after a disastrous relationship and losing her job.  Luckily, she found a new one with running the café at a local fitness club.  Her grandfather is using Val's skills with cooking to launch his own career as the Codger Cook writing for the local newspaper, using only five ingredients, which means Val has been modifying her recipes.  But she's learned not to let him in the kitchen due to the fact he can't cook.

One night he decides to give a dinner party, inviting his lady friend Lillian and several other people, and wants to put a certain guest named Scott on the hot seat, because he thinks Scott bilked his friend out of twenty thousand dollars.  So Val cooks two different chowders and then hides in the butler's pantry while cooking if someone enters the kitchen.  But the party doesn't go the way it should, and when Val senses trouble, she uses a back exit to run to the front of the house, and finds that Scott's taken ill...and later dies.  Everyone thinks it was Granddad who killed Scott, and Val decides to involve herself and find the killer, since she thinks the police are only focusing on her Granddad.

But to make things worse, her semi-boyfriend Gunnar's ex-fiancée Petra shows up, and suddenly things start going south for Val at her job, and it just gets worse.  Unless she can prove Petra had something to do with it, she might lose her job.  Now Val finds herself in the middle of two things causing grief, and both need to be figured out or Granddad will be in jail and she'll be out of a job...

This is the second book in the series, and I enjoyed the first, but found that this book still had the same problems.  Gunnar seems a bit self-centered (and dull), and only comes around when it's convenient for him; while I get that he likes Val, he never acts like a boyfriend toward her.  While I hope this doesn't turn into a love triangle, Val's decision not to trust good-looking me is ridiculous.  If she stays with Gunnar, I sure hope he treats her better.  As far as her granddad goes, I would like to see him also treat her better.  He's using her for her recipes and ability to cook, but doesn't give her any of the credit.  Val is good as a doormat.

As far as the mystery goes, it was certainly one that needed to be unraveled.  There were plenty of threads that became twisted together, and taking each one apart not only took time, it took effort on Val's part and several other people to help her see which thread was the one that led to death.  It was interesting and enjoyable; and when we got to the end it all came together nicely, and gave us a murderer who had no remorse over what was done, which is the worst kind to come across.  I will read the next in the series, and there are also some nice recipes in the back of the book. Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Scam-Chowder-Five-Ingredient-Mystery-Corrigan/dp/1617731404/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3357821440

More on Maya Corrigan's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/maya-corrigan/

The Tell-Tale Tarte (A Five-Ingredient Mystery #4)

Author:  Maya Corrigan
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781432840457; 9781496709172
Kensington Publishing
304 Pages
$26.20; $7.99; $5.99 Amazon
June 27, 2017

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The last thing Val needs in her life is an unsolved murder, especially when the victim, an actor famed for impersonating Edgar Allan Poe, happens to be dressed exactly like her Granddad.  To keep an eye on Granddad, whose latest job takes him to the home of Rick Usher, a local author inspired by Poe, Val gets herself hired as a cook in Rick's House of Usher.  When she discovers the actor wasn't the only one doing an impersonation, separating the innocent from the murderous becomes a real-life horror story.  But Val must decipher a killer's M.O. sooner rather than later...or she can forget about finding poetic justice.

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Val Deniston lives with her grandfather in Bayport, Maryland and runs a cafe in the local fitness club, and does catering on the side.  While helping her friend Bethany search for a wedding dress, they see a man who resembles her grandfather's new look - black coat, beard, tinted glasses - and thinks it might be him.  When the man falls in front of a car, she dashes toward him, relieved her fears were unfounded, but still helping give him CPR.  Unfortunately, no amount of CPR could save the man, still unknown to her and the people nearby.  Later that night she she finds out from her boyfriend Gunnar the man's name - Emmett Flint, an actor in the same troupe as Gunnar.

When Val goes to her latest job, a book club, it's when she's serving dessert that she sees the "noted author" invited is not only not the author, it's her grandfather Don who, for some unknown reason, is impersonating Rick Usher, the author in question.  Rick has made a career of writing in the style of Edgar Allan Poe and has quite a group of followers himself.  But when she questions his assistant Clancy, also attending the dinner, she discovers only that 'Rick' is supposedly hoarse from an ailment and Clancy is answering all questions.

As time progresses it is discovered that Emmett may not have died from natural causes, and Val is worried for her boyfriend Gunnar, who is the main suspect, and also her grandfather, who is now spending time with Rick himself.  So when Val is offered a job catering dinners at Usher's home, she agrees in order to try and find out who killed Emmett and why.  Will there be another murder or will poetic justice prevail?  Val will have to move fast to find the answer...

As a huge Poe fan, I once made a trip to Baltimore just to visit his grave, and own all his books (and wrote an essay on him while in school) so this book was one I was looking forward to reading.  While the plot had interesting points, and I did like the fact we have the murder almost immediately - which is always a nice thing so you aren't subjected to pages and pages of needless detail - it also moved slowly for the first quarter of the book.

Reading further, I was somewhat torn; partly because her grandfather seemed a bit of a con man to me: he used her recipes to get a job writing a food column for the newspaper, and then expects to continue so he can write a cookbook.  This did not endear me to the man, and grandfather or not, she should have set him straight about who gets the credit and where, especially since he's secretive on other things as well.  He seemed more like a "user" than a loving grandfather.  It also seemed like they were nothing more than business partners (and not very equal-sided, either).  As for the relationship between Val and Gunnar, there doesn't seem to be any "oomph" attached.  They just seemed boring when they were talking to each other.

Eventually the suspect list was narrowed down to a select few, and then you have the meat of the story.  Putting it together at the end was interesting, and it all came together nicely at last.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Tale-Tarte-Five-Ingredient-Mystery/dp/1496709179/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2124053233

More on Maya Corrigan's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/maya-corrigan/