A Stiff Risotto: A Heaven Lee Culinary Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)

In my review of "Death By Rhubarb" I had said that many of these series take awhile to get going and don't show much improvement until the 3rd or 4th book.

This is the 3rd book and this book is a great improvement over the first two books.

Heaven Lee, owner of Cafe Heaven in Kansas City and two of her employee's Chris Snyder and Joe Long are on their way to Aspen Colorado for the Real Dish Food Festival and the crowning of the Best Chef.

Accidents abound and when a body is found Heaven and her trusted employee's try to find out if someone is trying to kill off the competition or kill off the Festival itself.

Meanwhile back in Kansas City, Murray, the former New York Times Crime Reporter has been left in charge of Cafe Heaven, with some very funny results.

I really enjoyed this book, all the returning characters seem to be more fleshed out and real. I like the simultaneous storylines of, Heaven in Aspen and Murray in Kansas City.

New characters were still a little flat, but much more interesting and easy to remember than characters in the previous books who all seemed to blend together and made the reading very difficult.

After being regulated to a couple of lines in the second book, my two favorite characters from the first book, Chris and Murray are both heavily involved in the story. And even better, the only character I liked from the second book, Gorgeous, Hispanic, Texan barbequer, Bo Morales shows up again with his chuckwagon and mules.

I disliked Heaven Lee in the previous books but I like her a little in this one, she's not so eccentric. I also liked that the relationship between her and her twenty years younger "boyfriend" Hank was almost nil. There is just no chemistry in this relationship, although I think she does have great chemistry with a couple of other guys in the book.

The recipes are still a problem in this book, they're dropped right in the middle of the page, story just stops, recipe, story starts up again. I've started the next book and this problem seems to be solved. I know it's probably an editing problem not authors.

This is not a cozy mystery because there is too liberal a use of both the "F*" word and other profanities by both Heaven and other characters. A lot of sexual innuendo's between the characters.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read. It made me look forward to the next book. Hopefully, the writing will continue to improve and the rating continue to go up.

Once again, there's no rhyme or reason whatsoever for Heaven to involve herself in this mystery. How can she can just walk up to the police in a strange city that are investigating a murder, ask them what's going on, and receive access to the case and all their information? Why is she the one everyone running the contest and all the contestants come to in order to resolve their problems? Why is she even involved in the first place?

The supporting cast continues to grow in number and again it's nearly impossible to keep everyone straight, both because the names are so similar and common and because none of the characters are developed in the least. And the murderer was so obvious that I was honestly shocked at the end to find that it could actually be this person.

The character of Heaven becomes more overbearing and obnoxious with each story, without a single redeeming quality to her whatsoever. She's brash, pushy, nosy, annoying and just plain unlikeable.

The book is also poorly written. The characters converse constantly about things that they already know in order to convey information to the reader (i.e., when talking to Joe and Chris about her ex-husband Sol, Heaven uses his full name and gives background information on him that anyone who's read previous installments knows the guys already know). And the recipes in the middle of the text are just flat out annoying.

I'm done with this series, which is possibly the worst I've ever read.