Delilah Finds Some Deep Trouble at Her Opening
Who doesn’t love pizza? I know I do. That’s why Mindy Quigley’s Deep Dish Mysteries caught my eye as soon as I first heard about them. It took me a while to make room for Six Feet Deep Dish on my reading list, but I’m glad I did.
Delilah O’Leary is thrilled to be opening her own restaurant, a deep dish pizza restaurant, in the small resort town of Geneva Bay, Wisconsin. She’s loved her work as a chef for years, and is anxious to become her own boss. Plus, she’s got a mostly solid team of friends around her to staff the place.
The day before the official opening, Delilah is having a soft open/grand opening party for local big wigs as well as family and friends. The day gets off to a rocky start, however, when she has a fight with her fiancĂ©, the man financing the entire restaurant, and he storms off. Then, in the middle of the party, her great aunt is found over a dead body holding the murder weapon. And making no secret of the fact that the weapon is hers. With the restaurant’s opening put on hold, can Delilah figure out what happened?
It's always a balancing act for an author figuring out how much introduction to give at the beginning versus how quickly to get the story going. This book edged a little in the backstory category, but it wasn’t as bad as some books I’ve read. The body drops before too much time has passed, and I appreciated that we got several great twists along the way to the logical climax. In fact, this wasn’t plotted like a typical mystery. Sometimes, I’ll confess that doesn’t work for me, but in this case, the author pulled it off.
The author also walks a fine line with Delilah. She is a self-identified type A control freak. And that is on full display in the first chapter. I was afraid I might find her too annoying, but she wasn’t at all. I quite liked her, in fact, but I also enjoyed the opportunities for character growth we got along the way. The rest of the series regulars are also strong characters. This may only be the first book in the series, but I feel like we’ve got a strong community already.
Not to mention a great location. I love resort town settings. We only see a few glimpses of that setting here, but I loved what I saw, and I hope we get to explore that more in the next in the series as the summer season was just kicking off when this book ended.
Plus there’s the pizza. I’ll admit, I’m not a Chicago style deep dish pizza eater usually (we don’t see it too often here in Southern California), but my local pizza parlor is happy I was reading this book because it made me crave pizza enough to order one.
If you want to try to make some deep dish pizzas on your own, there are a couple of pizza recipes at the end plus a few non-pizza recipes to try.
Six Feet Deep Dish left me hungry for a second course. I’m looking forward to picking up the next books in the series soon.
Grab another slice with the rest of the Deep Dish Mysteries.
I have this one on my TBR. It sounds like a good one. Great review. You made me want to push it to the top of my TBR.
ReplyDeleteSounds fun - and I do love pizza. We don't get deep dish around here either.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds so fun and I'm about to read the 3rd book in the series. I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep up since I haven't read the first two books. I'm a pizza fan but not sure I've ever really had true deep dish!
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