Devil's Food

February 2, 2009
A missing parent, a lethal herbal tea and a sinister cult are a few of the mysterious ingredients in Greenwood's lively third cozy to feature cheerfully fat baker Corinna Chapman (after 2008's Heavenly Pleasures
). Chapman's estranged hippie mother, who organizes her time by the phases of the moon, arrives on the doorstep of Melbourne's Earthly Delights Bakery to announce her spouse's disappearance during an apparent midlife crisis. Further complications for Chapman include a toxic tea imbibed by two of her employees and a strange group of monks. To assist in finding the tea's supplier, locating her wandering father and determining the monks' activities, Chapman has a devoted, if eccentric, cohort—a sexy PI lover, a weaver, a follower of Wicca, a grand dame, a dominatrix, a retired classics professor and a nun or two. While a glossary of Australian terms would've helped the American reader, this doesn't detract from the warmhearted message that it takes a village to solve a mystery.

February 15, 2009
A missing father, a bizarre cult and two poisoned shop assistants keep a Melbourne baker on her toes in the latest from Greenwood (Heavenly Pleasures, 2008, etc.).

Whenever pleasantly plump Corinna Chapman and her beautiful Israeli investigator lover, Daniel, find a new puzzle to solve, her eccentric, mostly cat-loving neighbors at Insula, her Romanesque apartment building, are ready to pitch in. As Corinna blissfully bakes bread along with her assistant Jason, a reformed drug addict who's become a magician of muffins, her peace is shattered when her estranged hippie mother, Starshine, turns up minus her husband Sunlight, whose midlife crisis has propelled him from their commune in search of a younger woman. Luckily, one of the Insula residents, an old school friend of Star, is willing to take her in while Corinna searches for her errant dad. When her two bone-thin assistants start acting strangely, her neighborhood shopkeeper, Meroe the witch, discovers that the girls have been poisoned by an herbal diet tea they've been knocking back. Meantime, Insula neighbors Jon and Kepler find herbs hidden inside their imports from India. All paths seem to lead to members of a fat-despising cult who've been special ordering one of Corinna's most unusual breads. Corinna and Daniel are in for some surprises as they work to solve the overlapping mysteries while a murderer lurks.

Not in any sense a classic mystery. But like-minded readers will find themselves charmed by the oddball characters and obligatory recipes.

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