RECIPE FOR TROUBLE
By Jackie Griffey
Five Star/Thomson Gale
ISBN: 159414530X
261 pages, Hardback, $25.95
Genre: Cozy Mystery

Pine County Sheriff Cas Larkin is concerned when local celebrity Mattie Carrington’s kitchen explodes several minutes after she and her sister Katie leave home. Mattie and Katie are cousins of Miss Mayme and Miss Minnie Anderson, the two sisters who run their small town’s floral shop. However, Cas’s instincts kick into high gear when he learns that Mattie has had several accidents in the near past and had planned to be home the day of the explosion. When Mattie leases a lakeside cabin in their county to finish a cookbook she is writing, Cas makes it a point to keep check on her. During one of his visits, he finds Mattie unconscious and takes her to the hospital, where the doctor discloses she has been poisoned. All eyes point to Miss Minnie, the last person to visit Mattie, but Cas has other suspicions.

Fans of this series will feel as if they are spending time with old friends and new readers will quickly fall under the spell of all the warm characters in this sequel to The Nelson Scandal, from Cas’s wife Connie, the perpetual matchmaker, to Miss Mayme and Miss Minnie and several others. Griffey enfolds the reader in an engaging mystery that takes place in a charming locale, with spine-tingling suspense, a demented killer, and more than a few charismatic characters, including a psychic and faith healer.