Reviewer: Connie Payne
Title: If You Can't Stand the Heat - 1st in the Poppy Markham Culinary Cop Mystery series
Author: Robin Allen
Publisher: Midnight Ink
ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-2607-6
Release Date: May 2011
Genre/Sub-genre: Cozy Mystery
Year/Setting: Present day, Austin TX
Overall Rating: 4.0
Sexual Content Rating: None
Language (Profanity/Slang) Content Rating: None
Violent Content Rating: Moderate
Robin's Website/Blog: robinallentx.blogspot.com
After having grown up working in her father’s restaurant from the bottom up, Poppy Markham has branched out, leaving the family business to become a health inspector. It’s something she enjoys, keeping the public safe from food poisoning yet also ferreting out hidden infractions.
She has no desire to return to the restaurant business, especially if it means working under her head chef step-sister, Ursula, but she did promise her dad that she would help out the back of the house for Markham’s re-opening. If only she’d have said no.
Chef Evariste Bontecou, though invited by Poppy’s dad, Mitch, to take part in the re-opening, has been blustering and commandeering his way through the kitchen. He’s put more staff than not on edge and in tears. Tempers are more than high, they’re boiling. It’s little wonder that Evariste is found stabbed to death re-opening night.
Now Poppy is put in the middle of things. Ursula is arrested and her father collapses leaving her in charge. Her step-mother, Nina, is mysteriously trying to keep her from her father. There are a hundred and one questions that need asked and the police haven’t even asked one of them. And Nina won’t answer one.
As much as she dislikes Ursula, she doesn’t believe she killed Evariste. Reluctantly, with the help of a recent ex, Jamie, Poppy sets out to prove Ursula’s innocence and smoke out the killer and motivation behind it. Even if it means someone may be coming after her next. And what she learns may just be her undoing.
The relationships Poppy has with Ursula, Jamie, her next-door neighbors and her best friend/cousin, Daisy, and the staff at Markham’s and the Health Dept. are all by turns complex, frustrating, and eye-rolling.
Poppy is quite adept at questioning people to get info, she doesn’t tip her hand. Too much. Her theories and questions are interesting keeping the reader turning the pages. Ms. Allen runs Poppy (and the reader) in circles with clues and half answered questions that present themselves at every turn.
If You Can’t Stand the Heat is cozy and sweet with a definite savory bite to it.
Happy reading!
Connie
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