Love this story had great characters and was a fun read. Looking forward to what the author has in store next

A Poisonous Palate by Lucy Burdette brings a cold case into the present.

Will Hayley uncover what happened to the charismatic Veronica forty years ago?

Hayley Snow
Our sleuth is a food critic by day and a mystery-solving superhero, too. Hayley says she is just curious. However, her mind sees things that most don't notice, making her a great investigator. However, she isn't trained in self-defense, nor does she know how to use a gun.

Hayley is one of my favorite characters. I especially love her relationship with Gloria. The two of them are funny and fantastic together. I enjoyed Hayley's way of moving from appointment to appointment throughout the book. She is a great friend. I am so glad that she found Nathan. The two of them are perfect for each other.

The Mystery
So, we start with Catherine, an author who contacts Hayley to assist with trying to locate her old friend, Veronica, who went missing in 1978. Hayley tries to be careful, but once she hears the story, she is curious to see what they can find. Then they find one of the suspects murdered, bringing the Sheriff's Department into the investigation. Shortly after that, Catherine goes missing, and Hayley can't figure out what happened to her, but she keeps digging for answers.

Five Stars
My rating for A Poisonous Palate by Lucy Burdette is five stars. I absolutely didn't want to put it down and devoured it in one afternoon. What an excellent read. I highly recommend this installment and the whole series. Ms. Burdette is amazing at transporting me to the Keys. I always feel like I am right there with Hayley and her friends.

The recipes included are Nathan's Favorite Italian Pot Roast, Chicken Cacciatore, Crabcakes with Avocado and Mango Salsa, Profiteroles with Hot Fudge Sauce, and Cottage Cheese Oat Waffles.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of A Poisonous Palate by Lucy Burdette.

Until the next time,
~Jen

If you would like to see other reviews like this one, check out Baroness Book Trove.

Hayley Snow loves her life in Key West. She enjoys her job as a food critic: her marriage to Nathan Bransford, a Lieutenant in the Key West Police Department, is still in the honeymoon stage. They live in a close-knit houseboat community with great neighbors. Life is good.
From time to time, she has found herself involved in criminal cases, including murder, and her amateur sleuthing skills have gained her a reputation as a crime solver. She’s somewhat wary when she receives an email from a stranger with an enigmatic subject line, but she’s also intrigued. Catherine Davitt is writing a book about toxic love centered on Hemingway’s four disastrous marriages. She also wants to enlist Hayley to help in finding out what happened to a friend who disappeared in the area forty years ago. Against her better judgment, Hayley decides to talk with her. It’s a decision she soon comes to regret, as the woman becomes pushy and demanding, but she’s hooked on the case.
It seemed pretty straightforward, but Hayley discovers that digging into long-buried secrets can be dangerous, even deadly. Hayley Snow is a worthy protagonist in an entertaining series. The Key West location is a vital element in a delightful series. The descriptions of the food Hayley gets to sample add to the richness of the mysteries, and the included recipes are the cherry on top.

I definitely did not guess who the killer was, totally thought it was going to be someone else, so that was a pleasant surprise. I love cozy mysteries but I find that there are never serious consequences for the amateur sleuths and that gets frustrating at times. I love that there were consequences in this novel; Lucy Burdette did a great job of making this a realistic situation that the amateur sleuth would find themselves in when being nosy.

Looking forward to reading the next novel in the Key West Food Critic mystery series.

Hayley Snow gets an email from a stranger asking her to help solve a cold case. Catherine Davitt is a writer and wants Hayley to help her find out what happened to her friend Veronica who just disappeared some forty years ago.
As Hayley and Catherine dig more and ask questions to get answers things get more intriguing.
Miss Gloria had me laughing as only someone her age could get away with just about anything.
I very much enjoyed my escape to Key West and adventure with Haley Snow.
Restaurant visits are a must when sleuthing with Hayley. Recipes are included at the end.

Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to read this book.

"A Poisonous Palate" is the 14th Key West Food Critic Mystery. Haley Snow is asked to help solve a decades-old missing person case. Catherine, the missing woman’s friend, is in Key West to research an article on Hemingway and his four wives. Haley and Catherine find a body, and then Catherine goes missing. The police try to get Haley to quit investigating, but she persists in trying to find the missing women. I’ll admit I got distracted from "A Poisonous Palate" by reading Wikipedia articles on Hemingway and his wives. If you’re a fan of the Key West Food Critic Mysteries, you’re going to enjoy this one.

I was kindly provided an e-copy of this book by the publisher and/or author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"A Poisonous Plate (A Key West Food Critic #14)" by Lucy Burdette has us flashing back to a 70's mangrove commune camp and combining a cold case with a current case. At times it wasn't quite obvious we were in a flashback or took a few lines before realizing it. I also started skipping over the quotes at the beginning of chapters since some seemed a stretch to be relevant.

Hayley gets sucked in an old missing person's case when the missing girl's best friend goes missing too after asking for Hayley help with the 40 year old case. This takes Hayley investing an old commune the girls had joined when they ran away from home. It was the 70's in a commune, think stereotypical things that go with that.

There were several possible suspects. However, there was one person that kept being part of the story that I didn't totally think would get mentioned so often if they weren't involved somehow. Especially a couple of comments being made about them that seemed either unnecessary or as a hint hint. My gut instinct about them turned out to be correct.

The next Key West food critic mystery finds Hayley helping a woman find out what happened to her friend 40 years ago.

I enjoy this series a lot! I didn’t enjoy this one as much as others but I think its structure was a little slower. I also don’t know that we needed the 1978 sections - I didn’t hate them by any means but they also did not add to my enjoyment or help me figure out the whodunnit. Regardless, I’m excited to see where Hayley’s adventures take her next!

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I just reviewed A Poisonous Palate by Lucy Burdette. #APoisonousPalate #NetGalley.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, in fact I couldn’t put it down. The murder mystery really had me guessing right until the end. I love the KeyWest backdrop to the story and the recipes at the end are an added bonus. I highly recommend.

In A POISONOUS PALATE by Lucy Burdette Haley Snow meets with Catherine Davitt at the Hemingway house where Catherine is researching Hemingway and his wives for a book she is writing. Haley agrees to help Catherine solve the mystery of her friend who went missing from a Key West commune back in the 1970s.

It is fun to return to Key West and enter Haley Snow’s world. Her husband, Nathan, and her elderly friend, Miss Gloria, are both included in this story. The well-constructed plot is accentuated by Catherine Davitt’s writings. I also enjoy reading about the connections made to Hemingway and his wives. I wonder what will happen next in the Key West Food Critic’s mystery series. Thank you, Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley, for the chance to read and review an advance reader copy of A POISONOUS PALATE.

Catherine has returned to the keys for research. M]this is about a book on Hemenway’s wives. .She is also there to check out her missing friend Veronica. Catherine ends up asking Haley for help with the mystery of Veronica’s disappearance. Once Haley begins her investigation
She realized that the people who knew Veronica do not want to be involved. It’s because they don’t want to be involved that it takes Haley a lot longer to figure out what is going on but eventually she does unravel all the clues and finds out what really happened to Veronica.
This was the first book o read in this series and I really enjoyed it, I do have to say the ending was very surprising, I am looking forward to reading more in this series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC.

Hayley Snow receives an email about a forty-five-year-old missing person’s case. She is intrigued. After discussing it with her friends, Hayley decides to meet up with the woman and find out what her story is.

The woman, Catherine, spins an interesting yarn and without much of a struggle, Hayley is roped into driving her to a few places where Catherine and her friend hung out. At one of these places, Catherine, and Hayley, stumble across the body of one of the people she used to know back in the day.

Coincidence?

Hayley - and the police - entertain the possibility it is not. Hayley contemplates whether it is possible Catherine went to the motel in the morning, killed, then returned to her hotel to be picked up by Hayley at ten, in order to have Hayley with her when she ‘found’ the body. But if Catherine had plotted this, then why did she go into the office alone and discover the body on her own. If Hayley was supposed to be her alibi, why not make sure Hayley was her alibi all the way?

Hayley decides to speak to a few people from Catherine’s past without her. To see if they tell a different story, or talk more freely. Surprisingly, they do. Very few are deterred by the bombardment of questions Hayley unleashes on them.

It irked me that Hayley was not very good at asking questions. She asks too many questions without waiting for answers and she doesn’t ask good follow up questions. When Arthur says: “But when I think back on that last night before she disappeared, I think that can’t be true.” Hayley does not jump on the opportunity to ask: So what happened that night. Rather she asks a completely unrelated question. (Later Miss Gloria mentions that “Nobody’s exactly told us what occurred that last night.” Of course not! If you don’t ask. They don’t even have to be evasive about it.)

Then Catherine herself disappears, but this does not seem to get more than an eyebrow raise.

Hayley continues her investigation, she has become intrigues by the old missing person’s case.

When food critic Hayley Snow receives an intriguing email about a mysterious, decades-old disappearance, her curiosity is piqued. Writer Catherine Davitt has returned to the Keys to research a book about Hemingway’s wives, but she’s also on the hunt for the truth about her missing friend. Hayley quickly agrees to help investigate and they hit the road to see what clues they might find.
Back in the late 1970s, Catherine and her friend Veronica were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves of Big Pine Key, until Veronica vanished, and the sheriff’s office cleared out the camp. Catherine and Hayley begin interviewing Big Pine Key residents who were around at the time of Veronica’s disappearance, but uncover more questions than answers. Catherine and Hayley stop to speak with a motel owner who frequented the fringes of the commune, but they find him stabbed to death. Then Catherine also goes missing, and signs point to a connection between the old case and the new murder. It’s up to Hayley to unravel the knot of secrets and lies before time runs out. Fun cozy series made even better with the included recipes! Highly recommend!

A fascinating mystery with believable characters and a intriguing plot. When a girl goes missing and her friend comes to get answersb20 years later it makes for a good mystery. I enjoyed the setting as well as the story.I had not read any other books in this series but it did not matter when reading this one. I would recommend this book.

A Poison Palate is part of the Key West Food Critic mystery series. I have not read all of this series and this story was easy to keep up with. Hayley Snow is a food critic that has made a name for herself as an amateur detective. An email sends Hayley down a rabbit hole with a disappearance in the 1970’s to a current murder and a missing person. Even though the whodunnit was not a big shock, the mystery twists and turns for an enjoyable cozy with fun characters. My voluntary, unbiased, and non mandatory review is based upon a review copy from NetGalley.

Hailey finds herself investigating a cold case disappearance of a girl in 1978 by a strange email request. While interviewing the people still around, she stumbles unto a murder victim, and the instigator of the investigation disappears. What in Hemingway is going on? With the help of Miss Gloria and Nathan, she follows the clues to find why the girl disappeared in the first place, and who the more recent murderer was. This book was a little more complicated and serious than the others in the series, and I only guessed who the killer was right before the reveal. Recipes included.

As a former Floridian, I always enjoy the virtual visit to Key West to catch up with Hayley and her circle of friends. As usual, she's beyond busy, keeping her food column fresh, helping Danielle with her wedding, and, yikes, another murder. Well, maybe two murders. One a cold case, decades cold, in fact, and the other a murder Hayley stumbled across while trying to help out Catherine Davitt, a writer who wants Hayley's help delving into the decades old disappearance of a friend. Then, after they stumble across a body, Catherine disappears, too. Was she the murderer and simply using Hayley or has something happened to her, too? Needless to say, Hayley, an admitted snoop, simply feels driven to investigate against all the advice of not just friends but police investigator husband Nathan. He pretty much knows he's wasting his breath, of course, although fears she may stir up the proverbial hornet's nest and find herself in danger. And wait until you hear what Nathan's been up to!

I won't detail the plot much further other than to note that there are plentiful suspects. This book is 14th in the series but works well as a standalone although new readers will find themselves wanting to catch up on missed episodes when past sleuthing escapades are mentioned, most in the company of 80-something years old Miss Gloria who is a delightful character and part of the reason Hayley finds herself (and Nathan) living on a houseboat. In the process of reading, you'll find yourself soaking up the atmosphere of South Florida, especially the almost mythical Keys. You'll even get to tromp into a mangrove swamp. When not learning about old hippie havens in the area and some prime eating places, you'll be busy learning a great deal about Ernest Hemingway's Key West era, not to mention delving into his possible inner demons.

As for the murder, it's an intriguing one weaving past into present and reviving old emotions and secrets some would wish remained buried. Hayley seems almost obsessed with the case. Honestly, I'm always surprised at the ease with which both sources and suspects respond to her not always subtle questioning. She rarely pushes too far, albeit she frequently has to get in one more question that sours the atmosphere. Will this get her in trouble? Oh, you already know that answer. Even Danielle's wedding seems to take the backseat to her thoughts about the investigation although she tries to focus. There's a great deal of driving around and talk, too, between Hayley and Miss Gloria, much of it sharing bits of Florida lore as well as observations they make. Don't let Miss Gloria's age make you underestimate her. She's sharp and knows when the befuddled ol' lady routine might be helpful, too.

Bottom line, there's lots going on with some of the past being shared by journal/diary entries by Catherine about the decades old disappearance of her friend. The explanations of why/what that relationship involved are also quite interesting. Toxic love isn't always romantic love, let's just say. I thoroughly enjoyed spending some time with Hayley, Nathan, and Miss Gloria, especially those more relaxed moment on the house boat. It's those relationships and the connections between other friends that keeps drawing me back to this series. Thanks #NetGalley and #CrookedLaneBooks for inviting me over for an early visit to the house boat to catch up with Hayley and the rest. I always feel like I've been to the Keys, not to mention in need of something yummy to snack on as I read and ponder those recipes at the end. Yummy.

Haley’s curious nature got her hoodwinked into the mystery of the woman who went missing thirty years ago. Rehashing the past can be dangerous, especially when it collides with the present. Secrets long forgotten came to light along with present danger. This story was mildly engaging with minimum intrigue and excitement.

I had read the first four or five books in this series, but it had been a while since I caught up with Hayley, so I was excited to get the newest adventure from #Netgally and #CrookedLaneBooks. I remembered why I enjoyed the series, love the Key West vibe, Hayley's friends, family, and neighbors, and the whole food scene. I also remember what bothered me about this series, and that is that Hayley does things that no intelligent woman with so much going for her would do. In this case, Hayley is contacted on the internet by a woman coming back to the area where she had done her best wild child rebellion back in the 70s. She contacts Hayley, wanting help to discover what happened to a friend who disappeared all those years ago. She has read about Hayley and wants her help. After meeting Catherine only twice, she is dragged into this mystery that now includes the murder of one of the original players. When Catherine also disappears, Hayley still decides she is going to get answers no matter what it means to her husband, friends, one whose wedding she's in the middle of, and the police and sheriff's departments. Unfortunately, the lack of concern for everyone who matters to her in favor of an investigation she has no one she attached to involved in and how it plays out is just over the top for me. Maybe you will feel different.

In this installment of the Key West Food Critic series amateur sleuth and food critic Hayley is asked to solve a cold case from decades earlier. A Poisonous Palate is simply fun, has dialogue that flows, has characters that are well-developed, realistic and likeable, and has an engaging and entertaining plot. If you are a fan of cozy mysteries, or would like to try out the genre, I highly recommend this book.