Culinary Mystery Writers to Read

It is no surprise that I enjoy reading mysteries. I love puzzles of all sorts. Well-conceived and written mysteries allow me to think along as both true clues and red herrings are strewn in my path. It’s such fun to get a two-fer book: an engaging story with its requisite sub-plots and a puzzle to solve along with the sleuth.

When you add recipes, à la culinary mysteries, I am the most thrilled. Now it’s a three-fer: engaging story with its requisite sub-plots, a puzzle to solve along with the sleuth, and a cookbook! I can never have too many recipes, even though I almost never follow them as written. Weird, huh?

My first culinary mystery author was one that got many of us started on the sub-genre: Diane Mott Davidson. Loved reading about Goldy Bear Schulz and her horrible-then-wonderful life and how she kept tripping over bodies in her small town. My eyes (and brain) flew open.

I was writing other fiction and why it never occurred to me to put my cooking interest into a mystery is beyond me. Let’s just say that “Ah Ha!” experience re-focused my writing.

I tend to read more cozy mysteries these days. I have lost patience with the traditional mystery in which “the great reveal” comes at the end, and in which it is often hard to think along with the sleuth. I’ve read a bunch of traditional mysteries over the years and still read some on occasion, but my interest has shifted. There is something so fun about cozies. They don’t take themselves over seriously. Sure, they want to write well and tell a good tale, but cozies are about entertainment.

Part of my interest is because I’m also a word guy. I love the punny titles that are characteristic of many culinary mysteries. What’s not to love about Assault and Pepper (Budewitz), The Long Quiche Goodbye (Aames), Dying for a Taste (Karst), Scene of the Climb (Dyer-Seeley), and One Foot in the Grape (O’Neil)?

Left Coast Crime panels have introduced me to some new culinary mystery writers, and being on panels with these women (yes, all women) has been fun, enlightening, and engaging. They are smart, funny, and they love food and adult beverages, too! Here are some you may not know, but I urge you to read them if you haven’t.

Avery Aames/Daryl Wood Gerber

Sometimes, when you have more than one series, you write under pen names. This author has three series! Avery writes the Cheese Shop Mysteries. You learn about cheeses and get some recipes, too. Daryl writes the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, the soon-to-be-published French Bistro Mysteries with recipes. She also has written a number of stand-alone suspense books.

Catherine Bruns

Catherine writes the Cookies and Chance Mysteries. Book one gives the recipe for the fortune cookies that connect to the Chance part of her series. There are some weird fortunes that are pertinent to the recipient, advancing character development.

Additionally, Catherine writes the Aloha Lagoon Mysteries (culinary) and the Cindy York Real Estate Mysteries (non-culinary.

Leslie Budewitz

Leslie writes the Spice Shop Mysteries (Seattle setting) and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries (Montana setting) with delicious recipes! She uses her books to teach us some very interesting stuff! For example, not only do we learn about herbs and spices, but her descriptions of how to use herbs and spices in food sound luscious! Delicious recipes included. She’s a past prez for Sisters in Crime, so you know she knows her way around a mystery!

Kate Dyer-Seeley/Ellie Alexander

Another multi-series author hails from the Northwest. As Kate, she writes writes the “Pacific Northwest Mystery” series and the new “Rose City Mystery” series. As Ellie she writes the “Bakeshop Mystery” series also set in the Northwest. Both series include amazing recipes you’ll enjoy along with the mystery that keeps you guessing.

Leslie Karst

Leslie’s background as an attorney served as the basis for her protag’s previous career also. Then Leslie went to culinary school. Her “Sally Solari Mysteries” are set in Santa Cruz, California. Leaving law to return to the family Italian restaurant business is more of an escape than a life-long dream. Then she inherits a restaurant. Leslie’s recipes are delicious and elegant. Very sophisticated food here.

Kathy Krevat/Kathy Aarons

Here’s another author with more ideas than one series can hold. As Kathy Krevat she writes the “Gourmet Cat” series. Kathy Aarons pens the “Chocolate Covered Mysteries.”  Both have delicious delectations for you to make, too. Kathy Aarons worked with a professional chocolatier to make sure her chocolate candies were perfect.

Nadine Nettmann

Nadine writes the Sommelier Mystery series. She is a certified sommelier and uses that knowledge to teach us about wines while twisting our minds around her engaging mysteries. No recipes, unfortunately, but lots of wine-food pairings are mentioned throughout. Her wine-speak (descriptions of wines) set my tongue a-quiver.

Carlene O’Neil

Carlene’s “Cypress Cove Mysteries” are set along the Northern California coast in wine country. Cypress Cove is a town very like, I mean, very like, Carmel. Her MC comes home to run the family winery she inherited. With an extensive background in alcohol (Carlene is accredited by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust), she teaches us about wine production while spinning a tale for us to unravel.

The culinary mystery field is ripe with authors and their tales of mystery and food beyond these few I’ve highlighted. If you haven’t already bitten into a culinary mystery, take a nibble of these.

Serving Up Murder: Culinary Mysteries

Well, now that the month of madness (called Month-of-Recipes) is over, we can move onto other things and get back to our usual once a week post. During the teeth of the Month-of-Eggs, I attended one of my favorite conferences, Left Coast Crime.

Left Coast Crime is a readers’ conference, but there are lots of authors there, too.  That’s so the readers can meet their favorite writers. The panels are geared toward a reader audience, not a writer one. As a result, as a writer, I listen to what is said and translate that into what I need to do in my books. Sometimes it is a convoluted transcription and other times it is very straight forward.

The panel I was on, “Serving Up Murder”, included five culinary mystery writers, one as moderator. I met some wonderful new-to-me authors and even featured a recipe from one during A Month-of-Eggs. I’m the one in the apron!

These are seriously good writers! If you are in the mood for some new culinary authors to read, check out:

Kathy Aarons

Ellie Alexander

Leslie Budewitz

Carlene O’Neil

Clearly Carlene and I didn’t get the memo about making your last name an early-in-the-alphabet one!

 Sorry for the poor picture quality of some. I didn't have jpegs, just the Amazon photos.

Kathy Aarons writes the chocolate shop series. She is friends with a master chocolatier who provides her recipes. Lavender truffles? Yummers!

You can find her at http://www.kathyaarons.com/

Her website says:

Kathy Aarons is the author of Death is Like a Box of Chocolates, the first in the CHOCOLATE COVERED MYSTERY series by Berkley Prime Crime.

Research for the series was such a hardship: sampling chocolate, making chocolate, sampling more chocolate, and hanging out in bookstores.

Kathy grew up in rural Pennsylvania, attended Carnegie Mellon University, and moved to New York City where she built her career in public relations and met her husband. They relocated to California where she became one of “those” moms: running the PTA, fundraising for school foundations, helping with a high school writers conference, creating costumes for youth theater, building puppets, and cheering on her daughters in hundreds of swim meets and soccer and basketball games.
She began writing when her youngest daughter attended school five days a week and pursued publishing more seriously when her oldest daughter went off to college.

She now lives in San Diego with her husband and two daughters where she wakes up far too early, and is currently obsessed with the Broadway Idiot documentary, finding the perfect cup of coffee, and Dallmann’s Sea Salt Caramels.
You can follow Kathy on Facebook or Twitter

Ellie Alexander writes the bakeshop mysteries and includes many passed down family favorite recipes in her books. Her small town locale, Ashland, Oregon, is a real place.

You can find her at http://www.bakeshopmystery.com/

Her Amazon author page says:

Ellie Alexander, author of the Bakeshop Mystery Series (St. Martin's Press), is a Pacific Northwest native who spends ample time testing pastry recipes in her home kitchen or at one of the many famed coffeehouses nearby. When she's not coated in flour, you'll find her outside exploring hiking trails and trying to burn off calories consumed in the name of research.

Find out more about Ellie and her books by visiting her here:
Blog: http://www.bakeshopmystery.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliealexanderauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BakeshopMystery

Leslie Budewitz writes the spice shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

She says she has learned tons about herbs and spices while writing the series. Her recipes are for spice blends and recipes using spices. Also check out her other series’ books.

You can find her at http://www.lesliebudewitz.com/

Her Amazon author page says:

As the Spice Shop Mysteries continue with GUILTY AS CINNAMON (December 2015, Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Random House), Pepper Reece knows that fiery flavors are the spice of life. But when a customer dies of a chili overdose, she finds herself in hot pursuit of a murderer...

Springtime in Seattle's Pike Place Market means tasty foods and wide-eyed tourists, and Pepper's Seattle Spice Shop is ready for the crowds. With flavorful combinations and a fresh approach, she's sure to win over the public. Even better, she's working with several local restaurants as their chief herb and spice supplier. Business is cooking, until one of Pepper's potential clients, a young chef named Tamara Langston, is found dead, her life extinguished by the dangerously hot ghost chili--a spice Pepper carries in her shop.

Now stuck in the middle of a heated police investigation, Pepper must use all her senses to find out who wanted to keep Tamara's new café from opening--before someone else gets burned...

I fell in love with Seattle's Pike Place Market as a college student, and still spends hours prowling its streets and alleys on every visit to the Emerald City. I'm also the author of the Food Lovers' Village Mysteries, set in Northwest Montana. DEATH A DENTE won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First novel. That followed my 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction for BOOKS, CROOKS & COUNSELORS: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure, drawing on my thirty years as a lawyer--and making me the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction.

I'm president of Sisters in Crime, and passionate about writers helping other writers. I love to cook, eat, hike, travel, garden, and paint--not necessarily in that order. I lives in northwest Montana with my husband Don Beans, a doctor of natural medicine, and our Burmese cat Ruff, a book cover model and an avid bird watcher.

For seasonal updates, please visit my website at http://www.LeslieBudewitz.com, to sign up for emails about new releases, launch parties and other fun goings-on, and book giveaways.

Find me on Facebook as Leslie Budewitz Author.

Drop by my blog, www.LeslieBudewitz.com/blog, for ways writers of all genres can use legal issues in their fiction--undue influence, wrongful conviction, and more.

Carlene O’Neil, our moderator, provided the beverage portion of our panel with her California wine country series. No recipes provided but food is mentioned—a lot! And the wines and wine-making are well described.

You can find her at carleneoneil.com

Her Amazon author page says:

National best selling author Carlene O'Neil is a former television writer, and is currently a commercial real estate broker in the Los Angeles market. She grew up in the heart of wine country in northern California, and is accredited by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. Currently she lives in Valencia, California. The Cypress Cove Mystery Series is set along the central California coast, and the similarities between the fictional town of Cypress Cove and the stunning town of Carmel are no accident.

One Foot in the Grape is the first in the series published by Berkley Prime Crime. Her second novel, Ripe for Murder, is scheduled for release March 2016. You can reach Carlene at her website at carleneoneil.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/CarleneONeilAuthor