Whenever you hear the genre term “foody,” meaning a mystery that includes recipes, the first name that usually comes into the conversation is that of Diane Mott Davidson. Her Goldy Shultz series is easily the most popular of the foody genre, and with good reason: she’s a good author and a good cook, and she describes her food in a way that makes you want to leap up and try it yourself.
Goldy Shultz is a caterer, owning her own company with the title and slogan: “Goldilocks’ Catering: Where Everything is Just Right.” Divorced from an abusive first husband affectionately referred to as “The Jerk,” she and her son Arch now live with her second husband, police investigator Tom Shultz, who treats her like a queen. A good friend, Julian Teller, is an assistant in her catering business, and together, they create fabulous dishes out of the most choice ingredients. It’s enough to make me wish I had a really big kitchen and all kinds of room to work.
In “Dark Torte,” the most recent release in this series, Goldy is on her way to a client’s office to prepare the next morning’s breakfast when she literally trips over a dead body in the lobby. It belongs to Goldy’s friend and neighbor Dusty Routte, a paralegal-in-training in the office and the niece of the boss himself. Suspicion immediately turns to Goldy, as the first person on the scene, but she is soon in the clear. Not for long, though. When Sally, Dusty’s mother, learns of her daughter’s death, she begs Goldy to look in to things for her. Goldy can’t tell her no, and she becomes involved in yet another murder case, to the dismay of her husband, who is always begging her to just let him do his job.
It’s not that easy, though. Goldy has connections that Tom doesn’t have, and she begins interviewing anyone that might have any information at all. She gets a little too close to the truth, however, and finds herself with a cord around her neck and all the life being squeezed out of her, just like Dusty.
Another delicious recipe for entertainment from Diane Mott Davidson, you will love this book. It does contain brief slight language, but not enough to offend me.
(This book was published by HarperCollins in 2006.)
