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Good series ( )

A mystery so cozy it invites you to cuddle up by the fire. The cullinary tips okay throughout the narration but the recipes at the end have little to do with the food included in the book. ( )

Caterers Bernadette “Bernie” and Libby Simmons should be thrilled that they have the opportunity to show off their culinary skills on the Hortense Calabash Cooking Show. They’re not. It’s the Christmas season and they have plenty of work to do at their shop, a Little Taste of Heaven. They were strong-armed by Longely New York’s powerful real estate agent (?) and Bernie’s childhood friend Bree Nottingham to be part of the cooking contest.

When the sisters arrive at the studio, they are greeted by a rogue’s gallery of obnoxious caterers, each with a decent motive to murder Ms. Calabash. So it’s no surprise that the nasty cooking show hostess winds up dead when her oven explodes – thank goodness the camera’s not rolling at the time. It seems that Bree is running the show when she insists – and the worm of a police chief agrees – that Bernie and Libby should investigate the murder, not the police. Even when there’s a second murder, the police are conspicuously AWOL.

If this all seems a bit too weird to believe, it is. The whole story is unbelievable and the characters are wooden, shallow and stereotypical. The murder methods are far-fetched and the motives difficult to fathom. The narrative rambles on, going off on one tangent, then another with side-trips into word origins and other trivia courtesy of the wisecracking Bernie. If all of the unrelated patter and diversions would have been edited out (which they should have been), the novel would have been a short story. It was difficult finishing A Catered Christmas but I toughed it out. Even the recipes couldn’t compensate for a very weak plot.

First published in Mystery News. ( )