Melina's Book Blog: Bayou Book Thief

Monday, June 20, 2022

Bayou Book Thief

Bayou Book Thief (A Vintage Cookbook Mystery) by Ellen Byron

About Bayou Book Thief

Bayou Book Thief (A Vintage Cookbook Mystery)

Cozy Mystery 1st in Series Setting - New Orleans Louisiana Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley (June 7, 2022) Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593437616 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593437612 Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09FPJHVGK

A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron.

Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.

Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.

The skills Ricki has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki’s past as curator of a billionaire’s first edition collection comes back to haunt her.

Will Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success … or a recipe for disaster?

What I Thought:

This is the first installment in the Vintage Cookbook Mystery Series. In this one, Miracle “Ricki” James has moved back to New Orleans from LA. Ricki wants to run the gift shop at the Bon Vee Culinary House Museum and sell vintage cookbooks and vintage kitchen gadgets. A tour guide at the museum is caught trying to steal some of Ricki’s vintage cookbooks and then ends up murdered. Ricki decides she needs to help the police solve the crime, so no negative light is shed on the museum. The plot of this book was well thought out and the story flowed well. I enjoyed the setting of this one and liked the characters that were introduced in this first installment. This one kept me turning the pages and was a quick read. There were just enough twists and turns to keep me guessing to the end and I was surprised by the ending. I enjoyed reading about the vintage cookbooks and kitchen wares that Ricki sold in the museum gift shop. I will definitely be reading more in this series.

I received a complimentary copy of this book

About Ellen Byron

Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Bayou Book Thief will be the first book in her new Vintage Cookbook Mysteries. She also writes the Catering Hall Mystery series under the name Maria DiRico.

Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. An alum of New Orleans’ Tulane University, she blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America and will be the 2023 Left Coast Crime Toastmaster. Please visit her at https://www.ellenbyron.com/