A Frying Shame
It’s a shame how petulant the Wrensdale Police Department treats Talia Marby. In the character’s debut in Linda Reilly’s A Deep Fried Mystery series, she confronts a man who has been harassing her boss only to find him slumped over his desk, dead. Talia eventually solves that murder mystery.
In book two of the series, Out of the Dying Pan,Talia encounters her nemesis from grade school who still carries a grudge. She soon finds the woman strangled to death by a scarf Talia knitted for her grandmother as a teen. Even though she was the WPD’s primary suspect, Talia again solves the case, probably to the embarrassment of the police.
You’d think the local cops would make the deep fried chef an honorary detective? No. In the third and last installment of the Deep Fried Mystery series, A Frying Shame, the woman winning the local cooking contest is brutally murdered and the only witness to the crime, Talia’s delivery boy, Lucas Bartolini, is assaulted and left in critical condition.
Detective Patti Prescott has had it with Talia’s amateur sleuthing and warns the restaurant owner to butt out of the investigation or find herself thrown behind bars. Even with her hands tied, Talia still noses around unobtrusively to find clues she can quietly pass on to Prescott.
Author Linda Reilly gave herself a tough assignment in writing a mystery novel where the brains in the investigation is told to mind her own business. But Lucas is Talia’s business and she wants nothing better than to bring his assaulter to justice.
As in the other two books in the Deep Fried Mystery series, Reilly develops interesting characters in a hometown setting nestled in the Massachusetts Berkshires to create a mystery puzzler. A Frying Shame is a whodunit few will figure out before the thrilling climax.
About the Author
Linda Reilly is a mystery writer living with her husband in southern New Hampshire. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Cat Writers’ Association.
Her first cozy mystery, Some Enchanted Murder, was a finalist for the 2014 Silver Falchion Award in the category “Best First Novel: Cozy, Traditional and Historical.”
Linda is also the author of the Cat Lady Mysteries published by Kensington Lyrical and of the Deep Fried mysteries published by Berkley Prime Crime.
ESCAPE CLAWS, her first Cat Lady Mystery, was selected by Modern Cat Magazine, Connie’s Book Club, as a “must read” in the Spring/Summer 2018 issue.
Sounds like so many cases in life where the most competent person is shunned aside.