by Sandra Murphy & Leslie Budewitz

This week we are reviewing the latest Spice Shop Mystery by Leslie Budewitz, and we also have a fun guest post by Leslie about the setting of her books in Seattle. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase the book from Amazon.

To Err Is Cumin by Leslie Budewitz
Review by Sandra Murphy

It’s a given that any furniture left at the curb is up for grabs. When Pepper finds an old wingback chair, in need of new upholstery but with good bones, she’s sure she found just the right chair for her mom and dad’s new-old house. They’ve lived away for years but are now coming back to the area and to the very house they once owned.

Pepper’s surprised to see a man run out of the apartment building, frantic to find a woman named Talia. The chair was hers and if it’s at the curb, something must have happened to her. Although Pepper doesn’t recognize him at the time, she later realizes it was Boz. She owns the Spice Shop in Pike Place Market. The restaurant where Boz worked bought her spices. Too bad she kind of got him fired and the restaurant ended up closing soon after.

Back home, she finds the chair has a secret and it’s no little thing. She’s in agreement with Boz, something has happened to the mysterious Talia. Without a last name or description, how will she be able to find Talia? Piece by piece, the clues begin to fall into place. Too bad she can’t find out more from Boz. He was found in the Ship Canal, face down, drowned. Since he also had a head wound, there’s a good possibility he was murdered. That leaves some of Pepper’s spice customers in a bad spot since they didn’t have warm feelings for Boz from previous encounters.

There’s a lot of history in Pike Place Market and Budewitz incorporates it seamlessly into the story. From the fish vendors who throw fish to entertain shoppers, to the drawbridge that holds up street traffic so water traffic can pass under the too low bridge, to the friendships among the sellers at the Market, page after page, readers will feel like they’re walking right beside Pepper.

This is book eight in the series. It’s long been a favorite series and more than just a book. It’s a visit home to a place you never lived.

Recipes, tips, and spice notes are included: how to cook asparagus in water or roast it in the oven, creamy asparagus soup with cumin, asparagus braised with butter and herbs, roasted beet and feta salad with cumin dressing, lemon cream scones with lemon glaze, rhubarb almond muffins, Kir Royale to drink, four ingredient asparagus tart, Moroccan chocolate mousse, and the cumin nature burger.

Sandra Murphy lives in the shadow of the Arch in St. Louis Missouri. She’s the editor for the upcoming Yeet Me in St Louis, an anthology with stories from twelve St. Louis writers. Her own short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and anthologies such as The Perp Wore Pumpkin and I (Almost) Died in Your Arms. ‘Lucy’s Tree’, published in The Eyes of Texas, won a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. She lives in St. Louis with Ozzie the Westie Impersonator and his sidekick in crime, Louie the Cat.

Street Walking in Seattle
by Leslie Budewitz

I’m delighted to be here celebrating the release of To Err is Cumin, my eighth Spice Shop mystery and my 17th published novel.

My series protagonist is Pepper Reece, who owns the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. When her life fell apart at forty, after she almost tripped over her husband, a Seattle Police Department bike officer, and a meter maid practically plugging each other in the back corner of a restaurant where she’d gone for drinks with friends after work, on an evening he’d said he was working late, and then she lost the HR job she loved when her law firm exploded in scandal—well, she bought the Spice Shop. She may not have been named for her job—Pepper is a nickname her grandfather gave her—but she knows it’s the work she was meant to do.

Leslie Budewitz

Like me, Pepper loves walking and exploring Seattle’s neighborhoods, she with her dog, Arf, an Airedale given to her by a homeless man in Assault & Pepper, first in the series. Each book is deeply rooted in Pike Place Market, a place I fell in love with as a college freshman from Montana, not many years after voters saved it from “urban removal.” It was still a bit funky then, and I loved every inch of it, from the spice shop to the fish market to the newsstand, bakeries, buskers, and more. It’s a treat to visit again and give readers a tour, on the page.

Arf

Each book also explores another of the city’s neighborhoods. As a student at Seattle University, I got to know First Hill, Broadway, and Capitol Hill well. I walked the long blocks for hours, not minding the rain, loving the leaves falling on the cracked sidewalks, ogling the historic homes and curious buildings, seeking out their stories. Capitol Hill features regularly in the series, as the place where Pepper lived until she was 12 and where her BFF Kristen still lives. I knew their house well, the center of a peace and justice community that inspired the one in which Pepper and Kristen were raised.

Market clock sign

In To Err is Cumin, the Fremont area takes a turn. And when you go to Fremont, be prepared for the unexpected.

I got to Fremont by walking—no surprise—from my apartment in Wallingford, the neighborhood to the east. You’ll probably get there over the Fremont Bridge, built in 1917, one of the city’s four bascule drawbridges.

PPM flowers

Naturally, Pepper and Arf love it.

These days when I visit, I’m drawn to the Vintage Mall where Pepper seeks out clues and accidentally buys one. (Along with the vintage traffic light on the cover of the book. Part of the fun of writing is that I get to enjoy an odd find like that, without actually having to make space for it in my house.)

As the story opens, Pepper and her pal Laurel are enjoying the Fremont Sunday Market, a seasonal outdoor market Pepper describes as “part craft fair, part garage sale, part costume party, punctuated by a few farm stands.”

Where else but Fremont would naked bike riding be A Thing? Happily, those bicyclists lend Pepper a hand when she needs one, after she tussles with a killer and takes an unexpected dive into the Ship Canal.

You never know what joys, surprises, quirks, and clues you’ll find when you take the time to stroll the city streets. Especially if you’re taking a walk with Pepper, and me.

You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.

To enter to win a copy of To Err is Cumin, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “cumin” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen September 7, 2024. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

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Leslie Budewitz writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, along with the Food Lovers’ Village series, and historical short mysteries set in Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes stand-alone suspense. A three-time Agatha-Award winner, past president of Sisters in Crime, and former board member of Mystery Writers of America, she lives in NW Montana.

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.