This is the first in a series of southern cooking culinary mysteries by Gayle Leeson. I am a fan of culinary mysteries, and I think this series shows promise, but it needs a little work. While, for the most part, I enjoyed the book, and it was very quick and easy to read, I found the main character, Amy Flowers a bit histrionic in her insistence that she needed to solve the crime herself because she was a suspect and felt her life was on the line. At no point did I find this to be true, and consequently, found her to be a bit neurotic. Her friends (many of them were described as “lifelong friends“), were an interesting bunch, although I found it odd that so many of them were abandoned by their fathers. All in all, the book moves right along, the mystery is a good one, and the solution is satisfying. I will be reading more in the series with the hope that things, the main character in particular, settle down a bit.