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3.0 out of 5 stars
2nd Best In The Series, Feb 25 2004
By A Customer
Although not as good as "A Stiff Risotto." This is much better than the other's in the series.Heaven Lee, 45ish, once widowed, 4 times divorced, disbarred lawyer, ex-stripper and current restaurant owner, has gone to New Orleans to visit her friend Mary Whitten and to cook up some dishes for the Sisters Of The Holy Trinity annual benefit dinner. Things aren't going well for the sisters. Someone has stolen their prized crucifix, which the original sisters had brought with them from France hundreds of years before, put thousands of termites on their antique wooden staircase and are generally trying to mess up their celebration. Things can't get worse when at the celebration dinner, Mary's husband Truely is murdered, stabbed with one of Heaven's knives. Is this just one more thing to ruin the sister's celebration or is there something else? Do the nasty letters, Heaven had received at her restaurant have anything to do with it? Whatever it is, Heaven is determined to find out who killed her friends husband. What I liked about this book is that there are not the dozens of characters that she has in many of her books. That sometimes made it difficult to follow the storyline. This one only had a few additional characters and made for a very easy read. The mystery was good, although I did figure out the killer, but it was close to the end of the book so it didn't matter. Heaven is very funny in this book. The image of her walking into the police station with a dead bird to have them do a match on the bullet that killed it really had me laughing. The only downside to this story is that she doesn't use her reoccuring characters enough. Except for Murray - who takes over running her restaurant when she's gone, and Hank, her twenty years younger boyfriend, the other characters are hardly heard from at all. And you don't get a clear description of any of the characters. I'm still not really clear on what Heaven looks like. The amount of profanity in the book has decreased. I still wouldn't consider this a cozy mystery.
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