Mystery on the Menu" by Fiona Leitch (also available as "The Cornish Wedding Murder") is the captivating first installment in the Nosey Parker Mysteries series. Jodie 'Nosey' Parker, a former Sergeant from the Metropolitan Police, returns to her quaint Cornish village with her daughter Daisy, hoping for a fresh start away from the chaos of city life. However, her plans for a peaceful transition are disrupted when she becomes entangled in a mysterious case involving a missing bride, Cheryl, on the eve of her wedding.

Leitch crafts a delightful cozy mystery filled with humor, charming characters, and an engaging plot. Jodie's determination to uncover the truth, coupled with her inquisitive nature, leads her to investigate the disappearance, much to the chagrin of DCI Nathan Withers, the lead investigator. The dynamic between Jodie and Withers adds depth and intrigue to the story, as they navigate through twists, suspects, and red herrings.

The Cornish setting is vividly portrayed, enhancing the story's atmosphere and providing a picturesque backdrop to the unfolding events. Leitch's descriptive prose effortlessly transports readers to the idyllic village, making it feel like a character itself.

Overall, "Mystery on the Menu" is a delightful read, blending mystery, humor, and a touch of romance in a small-town setting. Fans of cozy mysteries will find themselves immersed in Jodie 'Nosey' Parker's world, eagerly anticipating the next installment in this charming series.

A little slow for me, but a fun cozy mystery! Thank you to the author and publisher in exchange for my review.

Murder On The Menu by Fiona Leith

Still spinning from the hustle band bustle of city life, Jodie is glad to be back in the Cornish Village she calls home. As a former policewoman, she is looking for a quieter life.

Murder happens. Good plot, well-written. Nosey Jodie helps her friend to be cleared of murder. Many characters, some friendly, some not. Many twists & turns before we can find the murderer. Scandals too. I recommend this book.

Thanks to Net Galley for sending me an advanced reader’s copy for my review.

This story will make you laugh out loud. There is so much crazy going on.The characters are realistic and likable. The story is well written and the twists in the plot are quite intriguing. I thought this was an incredibly fun read.

I will say that I moved this book to the back of my reading pile a number of times. I have no idea why, other than I felt like I couldn’t get into it. Despite the fact that I hadn’t even read a single page, I was captivated by it. When I finally sat down to read it, while I was waiting in the heart clinic, no less, I loved it from beginning to end. This was exactly what I needed in the middle of the seriousness of those visits. I needed to laugh and just feel good. If I could give this book more stars, I would.

Along with her 12-year-old daughter, Jodie, she has returned to her home town in a Cornish village. Once a police officer in London, she begins a new job running a catering service out of her van. The van she calls the “gimpmobile,” which I just love. I mean, come on, people! I mean, my first car was called the “pitmobile” because it was the pits! She gets her first gig catering her old friend Tony’s wedding. Her former nickname of “Nosey Parker” comes out in full force once a murder happens and she just can’t seem to help solving it. She was a cop, after all.

All of the secondary characters were so wonderful that they brought so much to the story. Even the gimpmobile adds a charm and a bit of fun that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I can’t wait for the next book in this series to come out.

I really enjoyed this cozy. It is set in a small Cornish village. Nosey (a childhood nickname) Parker has decided to come home after her divorce. She was a police officer in London, but now she has a young daughter to think about. This also gives her a chance to live her dream of a running a catering business. Her first client is an old boyfriend. Ok, this can be a bit awkward, but it gets worse when she shows up for the reception the evening before. The grooms ex shows up and makes a scene. The next day the ex is dead and the bride is missing. Nosey decides to check things out because the groom is now the prime murder suspect.

Such an entertaining story. Nosey knows many on the police force as her father was an admired police officer himself. Her nosiness helps track down the real killer. The story is easy-to-read and kept me turning the page. This is the first book in the series and I would definitely read the next one.

I will always say yes to Brit-Lit!

Ex-police officer turned cater in this cozy mystery- Jodie returns to her hometown with her daughter after the end of her marriage looking for a new start. When a body is found on the hotel grounds where Jodie is to be catering a wedding, her police background comes in handy.

This is the first book in the new Nosey Park Mysteries series, and a fantastic kick off. It was a book that I read in one sitting, and was truly an enjoyable cozy read.

📌 Pub Date: January 15, 2021

I was given an ARC of this story to read; but thoughts and opinions are all my own. Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Collins & Harper Collins Fiction for the chance to read this book!

Loved this story very enjoyable and great characters. A very delicious cozy can’t wait for the next book.

Murder on the Menu is the first book in Fiona Leitch's Nosey Parker Mystery series. This series is set in a small English village with its main character, Jodie "Nosey" Parker. Jodie had originally followed her father into law enforcement but after an incident that went viral and scared her daughter, she decided to leave law enforcement and open her own catering company back in her hometown.

Jodie is hired to cater the wedding of one of her childhood friends. The evening before the wedding the groom's ex-wife shows up at a dinner party for the couple to attempt to stop the wedding and is found dead the following morning and the bride has disappeared.

Although I found that this story started out somewhat slow with a lot of backstory of the characters included, once the history was established the storyline moved along at a decent pace with a number of motives, red herrings and misdirects. This author has established a cast of multidimensional characters. Although this story is resolved in a very unusual reveal, the author has also created substantial openings for the future of this series to lead the characters in numerous directions.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I really enjoyed this book and reviewed it for BookPage!

Set in the Cornish countryside, readers will be taken with ex-cop turned caterer Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker in this delightful debut in a new cozy mystery series from Fiona Leitch.

After serving nearly twenty years on the force with the Met Police and undergoing a contentious divorce, Jodie Parker and her twelve-year-old daughter Daisy are ready to start fresh. They move to Penstowan, the small Cornish village where Jodie grew up, and the former cop opens her own catering company. Her first client? Jodie’s longtime friend and one-time ex-boyfriend Tony hires her to cater his upcoming wedding. Several uninvited guests show up the night before the service, including Tony’s first wife, Mel, who promptly gets into a fistfight with the bride-to-be. When Tony’s fiancée disappears and a body is discovered on the hotel grounds the morning of the wedding, Jodie takes off her caterer’s coat and dives into the investigation in order to clear Tony’s name.

Jodie’s return to Penstowan is bittersweet: while she’s happy to live closer to her mom Shirley, a firecracker with a busy social life and wicked sense of humor, Jodie’s still coming to terms with living in the town that her late father Chief Inspector Eddie Parker dedicated his life to protecting.

Leitch’s writing is excellent. Witty dialogue and tongue-in-cheek humor elevate each scene, and the well-plotted mystery will keep readers guessing until the end. It’s easy to root for Jodie, who’s both funny and exceedingly capable as a detective, despite leaving the force. DCI Nathan Withers, the murder’s lead investigator, is both annoyed and impressed with Jodie, and their relationship is a high point of the book.

If you enjoy Murder on the Menu, you’re in luck: the next two entries in the series will be released this year.

A good start to a new series. I liked the characters and the small town setting but found that the story dragged in the middle; it could have benefitted from some editing. The mystery was interesting but ran on so long that I skimmed most of the book just to finish it.

This is such a delightful book and series! I also read A Cornish Christmas Murder and it’s so nice to see the genesis of the series. The character as tongue-in-cheek and a little over the top, in the most delightful cozy mystery way

Murder on the Menu

by Fiona Leitch

A delightful British cozy mystery, Murder on the Menu takes us to the fictional town of Penstowan in Cornwall where Jodie Parker and her daughter Daisy have returned to Jodie’s hometown after years on the police force in London. Wanting to remain safe for her daughter’s sake, Jodie retrained in culinary school and plans on starting a catering business. She gets her first job (from an old friend getting married) with little notice, but is anxious to prove herself.

The case of a murdered ex-wife and a bride who may have done a runner returns Jodie to her investigative roots. As she tries to discover the who and why, Nosey (as her childhood nickname used to be) Parker meets the handsome DCI Withers who really wishes she would stay out of his investigations and crime scenes.

I enjoyed all the Britishisms. I know biscuits in England are cookies in the U.S., but terms like “Jammie Dodgers,” butty with brown sauce,” and “ponce” sent me scurrying to the Internet. I love sleuthing words!

The characters are interesting and humor in dialogue and plot is sprinkled throughout. I enjoyed the Cornish accent and word choice like “guv” and “copper;” They are stronger in some of the characters than others depending on their backgrounds. Her mum and Daisy are appropriately supportive of Jodie’s passion for police work that she has trouble leaving behind. Jodie, to the delight of Daisy, adopts a Pomeranian when its human mom is murdered. An expert at “escapology,” the white fluff ball becomes a constant companion and essential to the plot.

The plot is complicated and Jodie is good at both finding clues and deducting their meanings. Our perception of DCI Withers develops from that of an “annoying git,” to a fair and honest investigator.

The setting includes the many varied locales from the town of Penstowan to tourist campsites and from the hotel for the wedding reception to the church hall for the weekly women’s coffee group.

The next three books in the series have already been published as there was lots of time for writing in New Zealand during the lockdown of 2020. This poses a task that I look forward to handling.

I would like to extend my thanks to NetGalley and to Harper 360 (One More Chapter) for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 5/5

Category: General Fiction (Adult), Mystery

Notes: 1. #1 in the Nosey Parker Cozy Mystery Series
2. Some questionable language

Publication: February 15, 2022—Harper 360 (One More Chapter)

Memorable Lines:

“This is your first major case here—definitely your first murder case; we don’t get a lot of those down this way—and you want to make a good impression by solving it quickly. But this is Cornwall. We don’t do things quickly here, and we don’t expect you to, either. We just want you to do it properly.”

“Are you all right, love?” she said, offering me a wine gum before adding with typical Cornish understatement, “That were a bit intense, weren’t it?”

I was excited about my new catering business,…but this got my adrenaline pumping in a way that making a velouté never could. I’d never been a detective, as such, but I’d always been nosey.

Read this last year - repost (did not re-read)

Murder on the Menu is a delightful new cozy mystery from Fiona Leitch. Set in Cornwall we follow Josie as she can't seem to give up the sleuthing she was meant to leave behind after returning home. The book had so many funny moments and honestly kept me guessing until the end. The pace of the story was perfect, giving me just enough about the people and the town while keeping the story moving. It's basically everything I love in a cozy mystery.

4/5 Stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Murder on the Menu
by Fiona Leitch
5 stars

Nosey Parker Mysteries is the first book in the series and starts with a bang, I loved it.
Jodie comes back to her hometown after her ex-cheats and her daughter ask her to not be a copper anymore, so she turns to another thing she loves cooking. Jodie decides to start a catering company and her first client is an old friend Tony for his wedding. While she is getting everything ready for the wedding, there's a scream. Someone has been murdered, the bride is missing and the only person they can connect with is the groom to be Tony.
Jodie dives back into her copper days and can't keep her nose out of the investigation.
I loved the characters and their stories everyone was hilarious and so full of life. Jodie can't let go of her old investigating days and she annoys the new cop in town DCI Withers.
I can't wait to get the other books, series I have no doubt ill fly through.
Thank you, Net Galley, and Harper 360 for the ARC for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley & Harper 360/One More Chapter for the opportunity to read and review this title. This is the debut in the Nosey Parker series. Jodie "Nosey" Parker returns to her hometown village in Cornwall with her daughter to be a caterer.

Jodie, a former police officer, gets the opportunity to cater her childhood friend, Tony's wedding. All is going well until Tony's ex-wife crashes the cocktail hour the night before the wedding and is found dead the next morning. Jodie finds herself compelled to investigate after her friend us named a suspect.

I really liked the pacing of the story. The village and its residents are well crafted. The connections between characters has a real quality to it. The mystery unfolds gradually and is well done. I will definitely be checking out more of this series.

The opinions in this review are solely mine and are freely given.

I liked this a lot! It was such a cute cozy mystery. I love the setting in England, and the main character, Jodie. She is a former police officer, turned chef. There were a lot of food descriptions as well as mystery solving. I think this was a strong start for a series, and I will definitely be reading the next one!

Murder on the Menu by Fiona Leitch is a new cozy series featuring Jodie (not Nosey, her childhood moniker), a caterer in her second career after having been with the Metropolitan Police in London for 20 years. She had retired and taken a yearlong course in food preparation after an especially gruesome escapade featuring a van driving on the sidewalk trying to kill people. That had been all over the news, she had been there and her eleven-year-old daughter had been traumatized. She was happy enough to get away from her cheating ex-husband anyway so here they were in Cornwall; back to here she had been raised. They had a cottage and using her mother's lawn chairs for seating was getting old so she went to the furniture store, Penhaligon's to see what she could find. She found a wonderful couch and an old high school friend. Tony Penhaligon and she had actually dated for about two weeks and he was looking good. Much better than the last time she had seen him. He was getting married. She met his intended, Cheryl, and discovered that they were having catering problems, so despite the fact that the big event was just a few days off, Jodie had her first gig!

This was a woman who couldn't get crime solving out of her blood. Her father had been a copper, she had been a copper, and now she had no choice but to investigate the death of Tony's ex-wife and the disappearance of his bride-to-be, the night before the wedding. The local chief inspector was Nathan Wilkerson and although he didn't seem to appreciate her, he eventually came around to appreciating how level headed she was and was happy to use her as a sounding board. Her daughter, Daisy, and her mum, were both very helpful, both with catering and investigating. It was a good mystery, with plenty of clues, some of which because she was in the right place at the right time. This is going to be a good series. I look forward to the next one.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Murder on the Menu by One More Chapter. Al thoughts and opinions are my own. #netgalley #onemorechapter #murderonthemenu #fionaleitch

I read the 4th-book in the Nosey Parker Mystery series, A Cornish Christmas Murder, back in November of 2021. I was looking for something cozy, comfortable and holiday-themed. As luck would have it, ACCM checked all of those boxes and many more.

I knew as soon as I finished it that I wanted to go back and read the previous three books. The main reason, I loved the characters. They're basically my new squad.

In this first book of the series, we follow our main, Jodie 'Nosey' Parker, after she has recently left her position at the Metropolitan Police in London, returning to the small Cornish village in which she grew up.

Jodie needs to make a new life for herself and her tween daughter, Daisey. Brainstorming ideas as to what she would like to do in lieu of policing, the only thing she can think of that she really loves is cooking. With that in mind, she decides to start her own catering company.

Soon after returning, Jodie runs into one of her closest friends from childhood, Tony Penhaligon. As they are catching up, Tony's issue with the caterer for his upcoming wedding comes to light. And by issue, I mean he no longer has one. Jodie, although hesitant with the date so close, agrees to take on the job. It sounds like just the kind of posh event she needs to get her new business off the ground.

On the night before the blessed event, Jodie and her sous-chefs, also known as her mother and child, are setting up in the kitchen of the hotel where the event will take place, when a disruption is heard coming from the lobby. Jodie finds the bride-to-be, Cheryl, in an all out tussle with Tony's ex-wife, Mel. Being the only person brave enough to jump in and separate the two, Jodie eventually breaks it up.

Speaking with Mel after the fight, all Jodie can determine is that Mel seems to think that Cheryl is after Tony for his money. Whether or not that is true, the show must go on. The rest of the Friday night cocktail party seems to go okay, but upon returning to the venue the following morning, Jodie finds all heck hath broken loose.

A body has been found on the grounds of the hotel, foul play a definite, and the future-Mrs. Penhaligon is missing. When local authorities seem to have eyes only for Tony, Jodie decides to launch an investigation of her own.

Murder on the Menu was just as delightful, cozy and murdery as A Cornish Christmas Murder. I am beyond happy that I made the time to start at the beginning of this series. I loved learning more of Jodie's back story, watching as she transitions from her life in London, meets DCI Withers, and adopts her adorable dog, Germaine.

As with any Cozy, there's a certain formula at play here that is just so comforting and nostalgic. I feel like you always know what you are going to get with a Cozy Mystery, but the humor and heart of these stories rarely ever disappoint.

Leitch has created such a great cast of characters here. I love that while Jodie is an independent sleuth, she still has the background of a police officer. Additionally, having her mother and daughter along for the ride makes it all that much more fun. I mean as fun as investigating random murders can be!

Thank you so much to the publisher, One More Chapter, for providing me a copy of this to read and review. I am in love with this series and have already bought the next book, A Brush With Death. I can't wait to start!

Jodie “Nosey” Parker and her daughter Daisy have moved back to Jodie’s hometown after her bitter divorce. It is a small Cornish village where everybody knows everybody and everybody’s business. But her mother lives there and so do her friends from her childhood.

A former police officer, Jodie has decided to change her career. She has opened a catering company and by luck her ex-boyfriend Tony has become her first client. Tony is getting married, and their caterer has backed out. Although Tony is thrilled Jodie has said yes, his fiancée Cheryl does not seem as excited. Cheryl does not give Jodie that warm and fuzzy feeling, but Tony seems to adore her so that’s all that matters.

Hoping her first catering job ever “kills it”, unfortunately does not go as planned. The night before the wedding, Tony’s ex-wife Mel shows up and starts an argument at the rehearsal dinner telling Tony that Cheryl does not really love him and is just marrying him for his money. Tony owns an antique shop.

The next morning, Mel is found dead at the hotel site and Cheryl is missing, although her car and suitcase are still on the premises. Tony is despondent and can’t believe Cheryl would kill Mel or disappear without talking to him. He asks Jodie to see if she can find out what happened to Mel and why Cheryl has vanished.

In the meantime, DCI Withers, has been put in charge of the case and he has no patience for Jodie’s meddling. Nor does he feel he needs any assistance from a caterer. No matter how hard Jodie tries to help, it seems Withers has his eyes on only one suspect. He then arrests Tony for the murder of his ex-wife! Jodie knows Tony would never hurt anybody, well she hopes he wouldn’t and against the advice of her mother and the inspector who has had quite enough of her antics, she puts her detective’s hat back on.

So, who did kill Mel and where on earth is Cheryl? How is it possible for such a small village to have so much drama, AND so many suspects??

Murder on the Menu is a very funny, interesting cozy mystery with a terrific surprise ending. It would be very easy for the reader to fall in love with all the interesting characters found in this tiny village. Since this is Book 1, I can only assume there will be a second and quite frankly I can’t wait!

Thank you #NetGalley #OneMoreChapter/HarperCollins #FionaLeitch #MurderontheMenu for the advanced copy.