Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Savvy Summers’ soul food cafe has always done great business, that is, until a customer drops dead shortly after eating a slice of her sweet potato pie. The cause is declared to be an accident but Savvy’s not so sure. With business pretty much non-existent now thanks to rumours about her pies, and the police seemingly uninterested in pursuing it further, she and Penny, her employee, best friend and sidekick, decide to do a little sleuthing of their own with a little help from Fanon, show more Savvy’s ex-husband and police sargeant. So what could go wrong? Well, as it turns out, plenty.

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes is a charming and thoroughly enjoyable cozy debut mystery by Sandra Jackson-Opoku and much of that is down to the character of Savvy, smart, sassy, resilient, and always with an appropriate quote from her Aunt Essie for every occasion. And, for the cooks out there, many of the recipes from Savvy’s cafe are included. I’m not sure if this is the start of a new series but I really hope there are more mysteries for Savvy and friends to solve in the future.

I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review show less

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A sparkling debut mystery set on the south side of Chicago, featuring the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, proprietor of a soul food café.

When Savvy Summers first opened Essie's soul food café, she never expected her customer-favorite sweet potato pie to become the center of a murder investigation. But when Grandy Jaspers, the 75-year-old neighborhood womanizer, drops dead at table two, she suddenly has more to worry about than just show more maintaining Essie's reputation for the finest soul food in the Chicagoland area.

Even as the police deem Grandy’s death an accident, Savvy quickly finds herself—and her beloved café—in the middle of an entire city’s worth of bad press. Desperate to clear her name and keep her business afloat, Savvy and her snooping assistant manager, Penny Lopés, take it upon themselves to find who really killed Grandy.

But with a slimy investor harassing her to sell her name and business, customers avoiding her sweet potato pie like the plague, and her police sergeant ex-husband suddenly back in the picture, will Savvy be able to clear the café’s name and solve Grandy’s murder before it all falls apart?

After all, while Savvy always said her sweet potato pie was to die for, she never meant literally.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Savvy is a funny, observant, cool customer who inhabits a richly interconnected world. It means a lot of what makes a cozy mystery work...the cast of characters, the sleuth's motivations, and the tone of the storytelling...are all present and accounted for from the get-go.

Just in case you're wondering, the sweet potato pie of the title (which, I'll note approvingly, is both vegan and murder weapon after a certain...addition's made) is very much part of the story line. You will not do well with your diet during this read. Calorie restriction and food-item substitution regimes are not supported by this author's descriptions of food. I would marry Savvy's macaroni and cheese and/or collards as described.

No quotes...I'm not that cruel.

Part of the charm of a series mystery is the scoobygroup of side characters, and the sidekick or assistant sleuth. Penny seems likely to do the latter sparkly and sneaky (a little too sneaky) role, and Savvy's grumblybear ex-husband Fanon does a lot of the fun sparking with her. He totally gets that Savvy's innocent and does things he might maybe shouldn't've because he knows Savvy so well.

So where's the fifth star, fussbudget? I can hear one partic'lar friend say. It got stuck in the run-around-accomplish-nothing middle third. The scumbag who wants to make profits *ptooptoo* without ethics takes up a lot of space. It's not quite there but it's close, like the sweet potato pie out of the oven just before it sets. I found the vernacular easy on my readerly ear; others will not feel it adds anything and might take away from their positive experience. My Rob was in the latter camp.

I'm also required to mention that Savvy is not an eager, nosy sleuth; she's compelled to act because she's got skin in this game as her pie's being blamed for a death that, frankly, ought to upset no one. Oh yeah...that's another piece of a star gone, it seems to me a lot of amateur-sleuth mysteries now are leaning hard on the crutch of making the victim a rotten-souled bastard. The use of that trope here makes a touch more sense, because it's Savvy's pie thus her reputation, but honestly? Just chalk this one up to cleanin' the gene pool, officer, and move on with your day.

So no...not a perfect read. A perfectly fun one, yes, and one I think will give a lot of summertime smiles to most all y'all. show less

The second Savvy Summers mystery, set on the South Side of Chicago, has the chef expanding her repertoire into Cajun food and catering an event for an old acquaintance. When one of the attendees is killed by poison in one of Savvy's po-boys, Savvy is on the case.

Savvy is helped by her first ex-husband Fanon who is a Chicago police officer. She's also helped by the unhoused man who wanders the neighborhood with his canine companion Sergeant Stubby.

Savvy is also dealing with the closing of show more her restaurant because of a construction project in the neighborhood. Even though her new restaurant will be a flagship part of the new development, it is hard for her to leave the memories built there since she opened.

This was an entertaining cozy mystery filled with mostly likeable characters. I enjoyed the Chicago setting. show less

Dollycas’s Thoughts

Essie’s Soul Food Café on the south side of Chicago is owned by Sapphire (Savvy) Summers and is named in honor of her Great-Aunt Essie, who had many words of wisdom on many subjects. Customers love the sweet potato pies Sassy, Penny, and Parker serve up every day. She never imagined the beloved pie would be part of a murder investigation. But that is what happens when one of her regular customers, a philandering, “cantankerous old goat,” named Grandy Jaspers, show more keels over dead after inhaling 2 pieces.

The police classify the death as an accident, but that doesn’t stop the mass exodus of customers. Sassy needs to do something fast, especially with real estate investor Noble McPherson tormenting her on a daily basis to sell the building and business to him. With the police doing basically nothing, she and Penny decide to investigate Grandy’s death themselves. This brings Savvy’s ex-husband, police sergeant Fanon, to her door to try to keep her safe and out of trouble.

Can Savvy get the answers she needs? Will she be able to home in on the killer? Or will the killer turn the tables and add Savvy to the body count?

Oh! These characters are fun! Savvy Summers is pretty sassy and knows her stuff. Her assistant manager, Penny Lopés, has no filter; she says what she thinks and pulls no punches. Together or apart, they are forces to be reckoned with. Savvy’s ex-husband, Chicago Police Sergeant Fanon Franklin, has been on the force for nearly 40 years and should have made detective long ago, but he doesn’t play games and couldn’t navigate CPD politics or the diplomacy to attain the promotion he wanted more than anything. He has a huge heart and appears to still be sweet on Savvy. We also meet Detective Emerson Jacobs, Fanon’s first partner, who he thinks will get Savvy to stop investigating, but the exact opposite happens. All these characters develop well while leaving room for growth as the series continues.

Ms. Jackson-Opoku has penned a terrific whodunit with an unusual murder weapon. There are a large number of suspects, one less after another murder. Both had a variety of enemies or people with motives to want them dead. The pace slowed a bit as Savvy and Penny worked through the suspects, clues, and twists to come up with plausible theories. I enjoyed following along. As we moved closer to the end of the story, I was still unsure, as was Savvy. Then an innocent moment took a very dark and suspenseful turn. I may have felt way too good about the eventual takedown. It was pretty awesome.

The ending was very satisfying, but there are changes ahead. You can’t stop progress, and according to Great Aunt Essie, “you gotta give some to get some.” (Though generosity is its own reward, it is often rewarded in kind.) I loved Great Aunt Essie’s Epithets! My favorite and one Savvy used frequently was “Lord, have mercy on their naked souls.” I have said the first three words a lot over the years, but had never heard them with the last four words until it came out of Savvy’s mouth.

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes is an amusing and enjoyable read with Southern roots. Charming characters, an intriguing mystery, plenty of sass and humor, and meals made with “a pinch of bacon grease and a pound of love” have set this series off to a nice start. I am excited for the next installment. show less