I was delighted to find Diane Mott Davidson’s culinary mystery books here on Mouthshut as my favorite light reading material is anything written by the queen of culinary mysteries.
’’The Grilling Season’’ is the first Davidson book I read and it whetted my appetite for more books with similar ingredients: a likeable heroine who loves to cook and appreciates good food; fascinating characters embroiled in believable plots; tantalizing recipes with the whole book amply spiced with humor and suspense.
In this seventh book in the series, Goldy Schulz, a caterer, is asked by her fourteen-year-old son to discover who really killed a woman. His father, and Goldy’s abusive ex-husband, has been accused of that murder.
I’ve read the paperback book and borrowed the audio tape from the library. The cassette I listened to was abridged so the listener doesn’t hear every word of the book but enough to still enjoy the voice of the reader, Cherry Jones, who sounds just as I’ve imagined Goldy to sound like.
If you’ve never read a culinary mystery before, I’d highly recommend starting with one of Davidson’s books. Culinary mysteries are in the cozy mysteries genre--light reading; not much emphasis on the blood and guts elements of murder; and usually with a female heroine who is an amateur sleuth.
Davidson’s fans, of course, will want to read all the Goldy books, starting with ’’Catering to Nobody’’. After devouring all the books in this series, one may find, as I have, a desire to read more in the banquet of culinary mystery
authors such as Robert B. Parker, Camilla Crespi, and Tamar Myers, to name a few.