by Nicole Kimberling

This is one of several LGBTQIA mysteries being featured this month in honor of Pride!

My new book, Mystery on the Menu is a cozy culinary mystery set in the fictional town of Orca’s Slough, a tiny island tourist destination in Puget Sound. It features Chef Drew Allison, the chef/owner of a struggling restaurant called the Eelgrass Bistro. One day Drew goes in to open the shop and finds his bartender dead in the basement — murdered with Drew’s own personal knife. Drew’s day only gets worse from there.

I wrote Mystery on the Menu because I wanted to pay homage to both the place where I live, the Pacific Northwest of the USA, and to my former career, which was restaurant cooking. I thought it would be cool to have an amateur sleuth who was a chef. Now, I know, culinary cozy mysteries aren’t anything new, but I knew I could bring my twenty-plus years of pro kitchen experience to the table in a way that would be fun and (hopefully) informative to the readers.

Professional kitchens are fascinating and, above all, deeply weird. They’re a mix of the highest of the high and the lowest of the lows. You have every single type of person working there, every age, gender, ethnicity, every aspiration and every addiction, including the addiction to working in the restaurant industry itself. Working in them, I learned so much about human nature and how different other people’s lives are. I wanted to create a character who brings that broad knowledge of humanity to into the mix.

But Drew isn’t the only sleuth uncovering the long-buried mysteries in Orca’s Slough. There is an official law enforcement agent on the case as well. Deputy “Big Mac” Mackenzie’s interest in Drew seemingly starts with the investigation of the homicide, but as the days pass, and after working in close proximity, Drew realizes he had Mac’s attention long before that.

Together the two solve three separate, but entangled homicides, while finding some new family along the way.

There is sugar. There is spice. There are a lot of people who are not so nice. If you like your mysteries served with a side dish of romance, try a sample of Mystery on the Menu.

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Also listen to our new mystery podcast where mystery short stories and first chapters are read by actors! They are also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. A new episode goes up next week.

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Nicole Kimberling is a novelist and the editor of Blind Eye Books. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award. Other works include the Bellingham Mystery Series, set in the Washington town where she resides with her wife of thirty years and an ongoing cooking column for Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She is also the creator and writer of “Lauren Proves Magic is Real!” a serial fiction podcast, which explores the day-to-day case files of Special Agent Keith Curry, supernatural food inspector.

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.