[.ca] Key Lime Pie Murder (ISBN 0758210191)

Gift-Wrapped in Key-Lime Sheen. Dreams & Schemes With Flavor & Cream:
Highly-creative confection recipes plumped the pages in KEY LIME PIE MURDER. Not knowing when to stop, the recipes opened themselves into luscious, heavy-laden, in-plot cooking, tasting, and contest judging. Then they incorporated themselves into a turbo-charged, flavor-upgrade including every imaginable slant of sweet & creamy. Yet, the surged concoctions didn't come across as overdone. (The extra hits of coffee maybe helped and were welcome!) The confections won a Literary Blue Prize from my taste buds, and enhanced the delight of light reading. This # 9 in Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen, Minnesota Cookie-Jar series was clearly giving Diane Mott Davidson a run-for-her-pie-crusts as "Queen of The Culinary Mystery." As many culinary mystery series as I've reviewed, this was one of the more successful for causing me to feel like I was literally tasting, sniffing, and munching along with the characters, especially with the judges of the entries in the baking contest for the county fair. (No calories in print, when it's absorbed from eyes to brain; I've had no compulsion yet to eat pages.) A collection of scenes took place inside the ambiance of judging-tasting-sprees back-dropping discussions of town doings and murder. It didn't take much of that for my level of addiction to the sweet treats in this plot to be shoved over the edge of any concern about addiction. What made that addiction achievement seem like such a feat to me was the fact that my natural preference for flavors, even in culinary mysteries, is savory rather than sweet, which is why I was so ecstatic to find Phyllis Richman's Chas Wheatley series a few years ago (Richman, now retired, had established a long running career as a savored food critic for the Washington Post, and every bite of her appreciation for haute cuisine in the high realms of restaurant magic seemed to have been incorporated into her series, which appears to have ... sob ... ended after her third entry, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Ham?" So, what can I say about # 9 in Fluke's series, except that I appreciated her enhanced ability in KEY LIME to use sweet instead of savory to provide a wide-eyed read, which fell easily into a state of "Yum" in mystery heaven. In addition to # 9's surge in texture and flavor of creative confections, KEY LIME seemed to have primed the collection of Lake Eden regulars, including Hannah and Dolores-monster-Mom, into a mode of Cheshire-Cat-relaxation, soaking up the ambiance of living in a world-of-fiction riding gleefully on The New York Times Best Seller List. I swear I could see that type of smug, snugly satisfaction in Joanne Fluke's grinning mug in the photo on this book's jacket (a lovely, perky pose taken at a book signing by her husband, Ruel). Every angle and edge of this book's plot, mood, and style was dreamy, content, and cozy without losing any depth in reading engrossment. Could a reader become intoxicated by a culinary mystery which was high on sugar, caffeine, chocolate, butter, cream ... with all of those served warm, gooey, fresh, and chewy? Well, I say to that, "Yep." So, how was room left for slipping in cultural issues or literary machinations? I have no clue. Yet, Fluke did interject tidbits about attitudes which detectives must develop in order to run their investigations without personal investment hampering perspective. Also, the characters of Norm, Mike, and Moishe, along with their relationships with Hannah and each other, were taken up a few notches in warmth and simple satisfaction. It seemed that Fluke packed into this novel everything she had developed and hoarded in her author's repertoire, and then some. At the same time it felt as if she had enjoyed the heck out of designing new recipes for this plot, and playing new schemes and scenes for its themes. Here lives an author who loves her work, has found her niche within it, and dug down for the long haul. With warm cookies of every imaginable variety, and pots of coffee forever brewed, brewing, or ready to brew, what else could Fluke do but simmer another sweet, tangy stew of a mystery, in a "one (or more) up" on her past offerings. This one did nicely, and even I, a person who grew up in a professional bakery in The Malt Shop in Florence, Colorado (see my Amazon Short, "Coal & Coca-Cola" on the USA site), was tempted to take time to bake some of these recipes. I hate to accept the fact that my energy for baking is almost gone, which is maybe one of the reasons for my seeking tangy flavor in fiction, which can be found in all types of novels, not exclusively in culinary mysteries. You've outdone yourself on this one, Joanne Fluke. All in good taste, Linda Shelnutt