Napa Valley Crush Week, a Sweet Treats Festival, and murder are a great recipe for a fantastic book. Daryl Wood Gerber is back with her second book in the French Bistro Mystery series. The grounds of Mimi Rousseau's bistro and B&B are full with the Sweet Treats Festival. Business is good, but things get messy when the festival owner turns up dead.
As always, Daryl writes a very good book. Mimi and her friends and staff are fun and have deep characterization. The setting is fantastic, and I was finding myself longing for a French bistro to go get some of the yummy dishes they described. Luckily, the recipes for most of the dishes were included in the book (I see a very messy but wonderful smelling kitchen in my near future). The plot of the book is tight, and she had great red herrings throughout. I had an inkling of who the murderer might be early on, but she kept throwing new suspects and motives in as I kept reading, so I wasn't sure that I was on the right track until just before Mimi figured it out. That kind of twisty-turny plot is hard to find, and I loved every minute of it.
If you want a cozy mystery that will make you hungry, long for Napa, and keep you guessing until the very end, this is the book for you.
I received a copy of this book from the author for a fair and honest review.