Della Carmichael returns in the second book in this delightful series by Melinda Wells. Della is the 47-year-old widow of an LAPD cop who died two years before the start of the novel. She is the owner of a cooking school in Santa Monica, CA, and more recently the host of a cable TV cooking show. She is persuaded by her precarious financial condition to enter a cake baking competition/reality tv show with a $25,000 cash prize. Mickey Jordan, the owner of the cable tv network, envisions the contest as a great way to publicize Della's cooking show.
All Della has to do to win the contest is to 'come up with the best new cake in the United States.' The only other catch is that the cake mix company sponsoring the show [and paying half the cost of its production] is a woman who was a sworn enemy of Della's since their college days decades earlier. But things take a somber turn when Della discovers that woman's dead body in the test kitchen, face down in a bowl of her own cake batter. When the husband of Della's best friend is suspected of the murder, Della takes it upon herself to try to find another viable suspect on whom the police can focus. And then things become more complicated when another body is found.
The well-drawn cast of characters includes Eileen O'Hara, th[Lizzie Hayes] ue [gorgeous] 20-year-old variously described as Della's semi-permanent houseguest, as well as her honorary niece and honorary daughter - it's complicated; Eileen's father, John, who was Della's late husband's partner on the LAPD; and Nicholas D'Martino, a crime reporter and the present man in Della's life, among others. And of course there's Tuffy, Della's standard poodle who joins her on the cable tv show and gets his own fan mail. In addition to learning some of the lesser-known facts about a tv cooking show, I discovered not only that there is such a thing as a "cake coach," but also something called "furniture repurposing' - stuff one might wrongly think is junk, I gather. [It should be noted that 14 pages of easy-to-follow recipes are included at the back of the book, and are sure to be savored - dual meaning here - by readers.]
The next book in the series, "The Proof is in the Pudding," is due out in the Fall of this year, and it is to be expected that it will be just a delightful as this one. A terrific protagonist, a good mystery, a surprising ending [and interesting food talk] - what more can one ask?
Recommended.
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Gloria Feit