Book Review: Bake Offed by Maya Corrigan (Five-Ingredient Mysteries #8)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Strong plot and characters

Cons: None for me

The Bottom Line:

A fan fest murder

A well plotted mystery

Sure to entertain

Mystery at the Mystery Convention

I have not been to nearly enough mystery conventions in my life.  I’d love to change that, but they generally don’t seem to work with my budget or schedule.  However, I was thrilled to get to attend one fictionally in the pages of Bake Offed, the eighth Five-Ingredient Mystery by Maya Corrigan.

If you are new to the series, it features Val Deniston and her granddad.  Val runs a café in a local health club and caters, while Granddad writes a weekly recipe column as the Codger Cook.  His hook?  All of his columns feature recipes with five ingredients.

Val’s best friend, Bethany, is helping organize the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest this year, and she has asked Val to help out as a volunteer.  Meanwhile, Granddad is participating in the baking contest that kicks off the weekend.  Each of the contestants is pretending to be the cook for a famous fictional detective.

Unfortunately, one of the other contestants is Cynthia Sweet.  Granddad dislikes Cynthia since she copied his Codger Cook idea and got a cookbook deal with it.  However, it becomes clear he wasn’t the only one who had issues with Cynthia.  Then Val finds Cynthia’s dead body in the middle of the night.  Is one of the attendees at the convention a killer?

Since Val, Granddad, and Bethany are a couple of hours away from home for the fan fest, we don’t see as much of the other series regulars.  We get a couple of updates on them, and one has more of an extended cameo than the others.  There’s also a return of a character we met earlier in the series, which was fun.  Of course, Val and Granddad are usually the stars of this series, and that doesn’t change here.  They really are fantastic characters, and I love their relationship.

This also gives the new characters plenty of time to come to life on the page.  We get to know them, and they do a great job of entertaining and confusing us as the plot unfolds.

And that plot?  It was fantastic.  The further we go along, the more intricate it really becomes.  Yet, when everything comes together at the end, it all makes sense.  Furthermore, the timeline stands up perfectly to everything that comes at it.  And you know how much bad timelines frustrate me.  I always appreciate how the clues are presented in this series, and this book is no  expection.

I also really enjoyed the setting.  Anyone who has attended a mystery convention will recognize some of what Val experiences, minus the murder and investigation of course.  They really are quite fun, and it made me want to attend one again soon.

As usual, we get a collection of The Codger Cook’s recipes at the end.  This time they are appropriately themed, and that’s all I will say.  I’ll let you see what I mean yourself.

Bake Offed is a fun addition to this series.  Fans will be happy to attend this convention with Val and Granddad.  If you are looking for a fun culinary cozy, I definitely recommend you pick this one up.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Five-Ingredient Mysteries.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.