Book Review: Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust by Mindy Quigley (Deep Dish Mysteries #2)

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Characters, setting, humor

Cons: Plot too unfocused, so the climax disappoints

The Bottom Line:

Juice bar turns deadly

Plenty going on in book

Result unfocused

Mystery Didn’t Quite Work for Me

I enjoyed the first book in the Deep Dish Mysteries when I finally read it last December.  The resort town setting in Wisconsin is great, the characters are engaging, and who doesn’t want to read about pizza?  So I was anxious to read the second, Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust.  Sadly, this one didn’t work as well for me.

Summer is winding down soon, which means that the crowds will be disappearing from Geneva Bay, Wisconsin.  Unfortunately for Delilah O’Leary, she hasn’t earned quite as much as she needs during her deep dish pizza restaurant’s first season opened to survive the coming winter season comfortably.  Which means she needs to win the upcoming “Taste of Wisconsin” contest held during the annual Labor Day festival.  She’s been trying to prefect her recipe for weeks.  However, she is less than thrilled when she learns who the judge is going to be.

All that takes a back seat when someone drops dead in the new juice bar in town.  Delilah happens to be on hand, and she can’t help but get involved in the investigation.  But can she figure out what happened?

Honestly, this barely covers what is happening in this book.  As I was reading it, I couldn’t figure out what was related to the mystery and what was a subplot.  And I was okay with that.  There was so much going on that I never wanted to put the book down, and that’s always a good thing.

But when it came time to wrap things up, the book fell apart.  I get what the author was trying to do, and I applaud her efforts.  However, she didn’t pull it off.  Even the part I initially appreciated has now left me with a pretty major question.  Don’t get me wrong, we fully understand motives and things like that at the end.  I just wasn’t quite satisfied with how things unfolded.  And yes, I think a character’s actions don’t make sense even if motives do.  (I hope this makes sense.  I’m trying not to include spoilers.)

I think part of the problem is that there is so much going on that the mystery really is under developed.  If that had been given more time to develop, my issues might have been resolved.

Fortunately, the things I enjoyed about the first book were still here.  I loved the tourist town setting right on a lake.  This is definitely a town I would love to visit.

The characters are just as charming as they were in the first book.  Delilah has built a great team at the restaurant, and I enjoyed spending time with them.  The slow burn romance is fun, and she has a very entertaining cat.  I even laughed a few times as I read.

Speaking of laughing, be sure you read the recipes at the end.  We get a variety of them at the end (including one pizza, of course), and they are written by various characters, which is a hoot.

I’ve already bought book three in this series and preordered book four.  I’m hoping they will be a bit more focused than Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust turned out to be.

Grab another slice with the rest of the Deep Dish Mysteries.