Chili
Con Corpses
A
Supper Club Mystery with James Henry
J.
B. Stanley
Midnight
Ink (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1259-0 (0738712590)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1259-8 (9780738712598)
Publication Date: January 2008
List Price: $13.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): Things are chugging merrily along for librarian James Henry. He has a closet filled with new clothes, a trimmer waistline, and a closer bond with his father. His only real problem is that his girlfriend Lucy's interest in him seems to have inexplicably cooled. When schoolteacher Lindy suggests the club members join a Mexican cooking class, James jumps at the idea. Over cervezas and black bean dip, the supper club members warm to their new adventure. The class heats up even more when a reporter and her friends, twin sisters with supermodel physiques, enroll. But when people start turning up dead, and the evidence points toward Lindy, things become hotter than a jalapeo. James, who was looking to add a little more spice to his life, gets much more than he bargained for.
Review:
Anyone with an appetite for comfort food and a cozy read will feel
right at home with Chili con Corpses,
the third volume in J. B. Stanley’s popular Supper Club
Mystery series that features librarian James Henry,
(“Professor” to some), and his four Shenandoah
Valley Qunicy’s Gap friends, known to themselves as
“the Flab Five.” Between snacking, dieting,
exercising at the YMCA, attending Saturday night Mexican cooking
classes and getting on with their daily lives and sometimes feisty
loves, the culinary team discovers what’s cooking with a
murder most foul.
When school teacher Lindy Perez loudly announces to her friends that
she’ll kill a vivacious blonde twin if the twin makes a move
on the apple of her eye, Principal Chavez, it’s a recipe for
disaster. Especially when the twin is found strangled on a field trip
to the ghostly Luray Caverns. It’s an outing that Lindy has
arranged for her art students, a couple of chaperones, including Mr.
Sneed, a grandparent of student Adam Sneed, and, of course, the
stand-in chaperones, the ever-reliable supper club’s
“Flab Five.” The action heats up when the police
arrive, interview the students and witnesses who found the body, and
discover that Mr. Sneed has disappeared and learn soon after that
he’s no relation to Adam or any of Adam’s kin.
Furthermore, the murdered twin, a veterinarian by trade, was
substituting for her sister, the newly hired teacher at Blue Ridge
High. As the plot does a slow simmer, Murphy Alistair, The Shenandoah Star Ledger
editor-star reporter, gets into the act with some investigative
reporting, infiltrates the Saturday evening cooking classes, and whips
up some emotions when the romance between Lucy and James sours and she
eases into the breach, saucily offering herself as le plat du jour to
spice up James’ hormonal appetites. Murphy has known one of
the twins, and about their inherited millions, for years, and she
recently met the other one. She wants the murderer sliced and diced,
and she’s got everyone agreeing to help her. Broiling with
anger they set out to winnow the wheat from the chaff among the clues,
and to sift through the past lives of three prime suspects, two
veterinarians and a stockbroker, one of whom they’re out to
roast with a cleverly contrived ruse. In the end, they burn the killer,
getting him to confess to what a rotten apple he is before he gets his
just desserts at the hands of an accomplice who, in turn, ends up in
the beefy paws of Sergeant McClellan and the local constabulary.
Adding to the standard fare found in most cozies, Stanley includes food
references and sodium serving amounts in her chapter titles and salt
shaker illustrations, tasty snacking tidbits on almost every page, and
three full-blown mouth-watering recipes for Milla’s Mexican
Chicken Enchiladas, Milla’s
Mexican
Wedding Cookies, and Milla’s
Chili
con Queso. There’s
also a sample chapter of Stiffs
& Swine,
book four in the Supper Club series, included as an appetizer in the
appendix. As for other ingredients before the plot boils over and the
lid comes off in Chili con Corpses,
there’s a tastefully done bedroom scene with James and
Murphy, some heated but never bitter exchanges between James and Lucy,
more sugar than spice in a relationship between the cooking class chef,
Milla Fields, and James’ widower dad, Jackson, some nibbles
at a budding romance between a library assistant and a cub reporter,
and some tantalizing side bars about a lottery ticket found in the
returns book bin at the library, colourful descriptions of fantastic
meals and parties at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, the
digestive antics of a cat called “The Dalai Lama,”
and dollops of comfort zone scenes between the Flab Five and their
add-on friends at sites like the Dim Sum Kitchen, the Custard Cottage,
Johnny Appleseed’s Restaurant and Milla’s Fix
‘n Freeze cooking school. A palatable concoction to satisfy
the appetites of even the most discerning.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Chili Con Corpses and to Midnight Ink for providing a copy of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read Chili Con Corpses? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Carbs
& Cadavers
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), September 2006
ISBN-10: 0-7387-0913-1 (0738709131)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-0913-0 (9780738709130)
Fit
to Die
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), May 2007
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1067-9 (0738710679)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1067-9 (9780738710679)
Chili Con Corpses
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), January 2008
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1259-0 (0738712590)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1259-8 (9780738712598)
Stiffs and Swine
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), October 2008
ISBN-10: 0-7387-1267-1 (0738712671)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1267-3 (9780738712673)
Omnimystery
keywords for Chili Con Corpses
...
Location(s) referenced: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.
