The Diva Paints the Town [by] Krista Davis
New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2010]
978-0-425-233443; $6.99
Sophie Winston is feeling guilty: her reclusive neighbor, Mordecai Artemus, has died, and she never took him a home-cooked dinner or a plate of cookies, or invited him to come over. And, of course, she has been involved lately with Rooms and Blooms, an interior decoration and landscape show that is currently underway at a downtown hotel.
Very few people had ever seen the inside of Mordecai’s enormous mansion, and Sophie’s nemesis, Natasha, dashes in with the paramedics when his body is discovered. She is appalled by the house, and – always wanting to make a name for herself – she decides to take charge of remodeling the big monstrosity.
Natasha assigns rooms for people to decorate. Sophie is given the family room, where Mordecai lived – and died. She sets about doing something about it with the help of her friends Nina Norwood and Bernie Frei, who is the manager of one of the best restaurants in town. Mars, her ex-husband, and Natasha’s main squeeze, has decided he’d rather tote stuff for Sophie than Natasha, and joins her party.
But for Sophie, there is another party. In Mordecai’s will, he left his house to his Pomeranian, Emmaline, but he also wants a party for a group of former students, who have already received their invitations. He has a menu already set up, if Sophie will make these few dishes and put them out at the proper time, and also to order sprays of lilacs for the room, even though it is mid-February.
While getting ready for the bequest party, Sophie is cooking and her main squeeze, homicide detective Wolf is chopping vegetables, Nina comes running over, exclaiming that she has killed Kurt.
Kurt Finkel is Alexandria’s premier designer of kitchens, and has been tagged by Natasha to redo Mordecai’s kitchen. When they get their keys from her to start the work, Sophie and Nina get to meet him, but Nina has known him for a long time – once in the dim, dark past, they dated. There is a reunion, which gets out-of-hand, as Kurt begins to paw Nina. She pushes him away, and he falls and doesn’t get up. Hence her hysteria. But when they go back to check, the body is no longer there, so they decide that everything must be okay.
That is, until Sophie revisits the house and finds Kurt in a windowseat, very much dead. She reports the body, which again disappears. This time, policewoman Tara Borsos is not amused and threatens to arrest Sophie for having made a false police report. Tara is both young and attractive, and Sophie hears that she is going with Wolf to the banquet for Rooms and Blooms. Sophie doesn’t go on dates to events where she is working, but she is confused: Wolf had been so attentive to her the other night when she was getting ready for the bequest party.
During the banquet, awards are presented for the best booths, and one of them, featuring a glass house, is a winner. When they put the spotlight on it, they discover the dead body of Tara Borsos inside.
And then the bequest party comes along and Mordecai’s former students drop by. The set-up is just like the last party they had at Mordecai’s, when an experimental structure they’d all built was torched – part of the reason that Mordecai became the recluse he was. They discover a secret panel in the house, and inside it, the corpse of Kurt Finkel, also a former student, plus an older body. Just when you think things are just about wrapped up – more bodies appear!
But it all comes together in the end, as it should in a nice cozy series. This is one of my favorite cozy series – well constructed, good characters, and always a fun time, with great recipes and just the right splash of wit. Highly recommended.~lss-r
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My own book.
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