Fatally Flaky

In honor of the recent Malice Domestic Conference, Sarah Weinman and Publishers Weekly posted articles with reviews of some of the most popular traditional mysteries. You'd have to add to that listing New York Times best-selling author Diane Mott Davidson, who has won the Anthony Award from Bouchercon, was nominated for Agatha and Macavity Awards and was named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Writer of the Year. She just released her 15th novel in the Culinary Mystery Series featuring Goldy the caterer, titled Fatally Flaky. 

Fatally Flaky finds Goldy dealing with Billie Attenborough, the bridezilla from Hell. As if that isn't bad enough, Doc Finn, a beloved local physician and best friend of Goldy's godfather Jack, is killed in a car accident. When Jack begins to suspect Doc was murdered for his investigation of the Gold Gulch Spa, Goldy goes undercover at the Spa against her Sheriff husband's wishes, all the while dodging bridezilla, Jack's jealous goldigging son, and the owner of the spa who sabotaged Goldy's fledgling business years ago.

Here's an excerpt from the opening:

Cynics say getting married is a death wish.

Now, I'm no Pollyanna, but I try to ignore cynics. Anyway, what I usually say is that catering weddings is a death wish. My assistant, twenty-two-year old Justin Teller, and I laugh at that. Yucking it up provides a bit of comic relief within the stress of serving trays of appetizers with drinks, then lunch or dinner with wine, followed by cake with champagne or Asti Spumante—and doing it all quickly—to a hundred guests. Trust me—if there's one thing caterers need at weddings is comic relief.

Unfortunately, the events surrounding Bridezilla Billie Attenborough's wedidng proved the truth of the original axiom. Still, it wasn't a death wish that proved troublesome. It was death itself. And as the bodies piled up around the Attenborough nuptials, I began to think someone was gunning for me, too.

Turned out, I was right.

This not the type of book you pick up for proper police procedures and plausibility, but it's a light entertaining read and comes complete with recipes for the non-culinarily-challenged.

Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press interviewed Davidson, which you can find here (note there are 6 parts). She says when the first novel came out, the publisher didn't want to put recipes in the book. They said "No one was doing this" and she said, "Trust me. Mystery readers love to read about food because they love to eat whlie they're reading."

When asked by Peters why there's such a close connection between food and mystery novels, Davidson replied that writers use food to show a particular character or aspect of a character, such as Strike Three: You're Dead by Richard Dean Rosen in which the main character, a baseball player who is still grieving over the loss of a friend, cooks a big meal and then throws it out because he can't eat. Even before Davidson started writing her own books, she remembers novels like Promised Land by Robert B. Parker when Spencer is sauteeing veal cutlets while thinking about the case, which made her see how puzzling through dark details while performing something life-affirming like cooking provided a psychic break for both the detective and reader.

And in case you were wondering, this is definitely a "mom-friendly" book, so you can rest easy about picking up a copy for Mother's Day.