Crafts and Life

Inspiration Valley, North Carolina, is bubbling with excitement for the Taste of the Town festival, and Lila is right in the middle of it all. Along with her coworkers at the Novel Idea Literary Agency, Lila is organizing a grand celebrity chef event, featuring food television's biggest stars, complete with cooking demonstrations, cookbook giveaways, and even a culinary writing contest.

But just as the celebration is about to start, the demo kitchen blows up, taking one of the star cooks with it. With all the explosive egos of the cook’s colleagues, it’s hard to find someone who didn’t have a motive to eliminate the competition. Now Lila will have to scramble to figure out which of her clients is a killer—before someone else gets burned.

The new centre in Inspiration Valley is opening for business and the first thing on the agenda is the Taste of the Town Festival, Franklin (one of Lila's co-workers) has arranged for various celebrity chefs to be in attendance (Franklin mainly deals with cookbook deals) and they will be doing a cooking demonstration, as well as this there will be question and answer panels, with the chefs, food critics and food writers (including some from Lila's "stable" of Cozy Mystery writers, the start of the extravaganza is to be a meal with the chefs (and others), but before that there is a tour of the new facilities, as the Agents are showing the Chefs around they realise that herding cats would be easier that dealing with so many inflated egos in one place, it doesn't get much better over the dinner and one of the chefs storms out.  The next thing is an explosion from the new catering wing (luckily at a distance from the dinner!) and everyone is rushed out.  Then the firemen discover a body in the wreckage and that is just the start of a roller coaster of a time, with another death and people being arrested and then released.

With Trey home from college a week early and helping Makayla at the coffee shop (oh and she appears to have a secret admirer!), things hotting up with Sean and then vandalism it is another packed adventure for Lila.

Food and books, two of my all time favourites to read about and having Lucy Arlington putting them together like this is a winner, the pacing of the book hurtles along for a while and then allows you to catch your breath before the next installment, I love the fact that the other members of the town are gradually brought to the fore and we see their lives developing as much as Lila's does.  Another 5 star outing!