A Secret in Thyme - An Interview & Review

I'm happy to welcome Maureen Klovers to Cozy Up With Kathy today. Maureen writes the Rita Calabrese Culinary Mystery series. A SECRET IN THYME is the second book in the series and was released this week.

Kathy: Rita Calabrese is Acorn Hill's best cook and gardener. Do you garden? If so, do you cook from your bounty?

MK: My gardening skills pale in comparison to Rita's, but we do grow tomatoes, basil, and rosemary. I do, however, like to cook with fresh produce from the farmers' market. I test all of my recipes for my books until I get it right, which can take quite a few tries! Some of the recipes are old stand-bys that I've been cooking for years (like chocolate-dipped peanut butter biscotti), and others are ones that I had to learn so I could put them in the book. One is Rita's red sauce. I had to make this four or five times, each times experimenting with different ingredients, until I finally discovered the right secret ingredient: balsamic vinegar!


Kathy: In addition to Rita celebrating her 40th wedding anniversary, the town is celebrating its tercentenary! Have you ever been to a town's anniversary celebration?

MK: No, but some of it is based very loosely on my hometown's annual Fourth of July celebration. We have a big parade, with the police chief cruising down the street, and we used to have a woman who dressed as the Statue of Liberty and roller-skated down the street. I loosely based the stilt walker dressed as Uncle Sam on her.


Kathy: In A SECRET IN TIME the village's time capsule is opened revealing a skeleton! Have you ever participated in either creating or opening a time capsule?


MK: No, but I wish I had!


Kathy: What first drew you to cozy mysteries?

MK: I used to read and write only nonfiction. Then, one day, my mother and sister were visiting me and it was one of those sweltering D.C. summer days. We were hunkered down in my air conditioned house, a little bored, and started to talk about writing a book together. We sketched out the plot for a thriller starring a nun charged by the CIA with foiling a Communist plot in 1960s Italy. As strange as it sounds, it was based partly on real life, as my mother really had been a nun before getting married and having me, and she had also lived in Italy in the 1960s! (She was not, however, a spy, at least as far as I know.) We spent a few months working on the book together, but ultimately decided it was too difficult to co-write a book and that my mother should finish it on her own. But during that period, I started reading mysteries to get a sense of the competition and found that I really enjoyed the works of Agatha Christie, Lillian Jackson Braun, and other cozy authors. And then I thought, I should write one!


Kathy: Do you write in any other genres?

MK: I wrote a nonfiction memoir about my year teaching in a shantytown in Quito, Ecuador, as well as two traditional mysteries set in Washington, DC.


Kathy: Tell us about your series.

MK: It's a garden-to-table culinary cozy series set in the bucolic (fictional) hamlet of Acorn Hollow and starring Rita Calabrese, an Italian-American matriarch turned small-town crime reporter.


Kathy: Do you have a favorite character? If so, who and why?

MK: It's hard to pick! My characters are like my children. I love Rita, of course, but I'm also partial to her lovably cantankerous (but secretly soft-hearted) husband Sal, her sweet but hapless grown son Vinnie, and her saucy twin sister Rose, who can deflate Rita's bombast with a single word.


Kathy: Did you have a specific inspiration for your series?

MK: Yes, but she doesn't know she inspired Rita!


Kathy: What made you decide to publish your work?

MK: I wanted to share Rita's exploits with the world. It's just too funny to leave it in my head!


Kathy: If you could have a dinner party and invite 4 authors, living or dead, in any genre, who would you invite?

MK: Agatha Christie, of course! In addition to the fact that I love Poirot ("Death on the Nile" was my favorite), her autobiography demonstrates she'd be fascinating to converse with for so many other reasons. I'd love to hear what it was live to accompany her second (much younger!) husband on archaeological digs in Iraq. I'd also love to meet J.K. Rowling, but I wouldn't even ask her about Harry Potter. I think her novel "The Casual Vacancy" was one of the best books ever. I've never seen anyone else pull off over a dozen points of view in a single book. If I were going to teach a class on how to write, I'd make every student read "The Casual Vacancy." To round it out, I'd include Jane Austen, who I'm sure would all keep us laughing with her wit (plus I'd love to get her take on the #metoo movement), and Peter Hessler, who I think is the best travel writer living.


Kathy: What are you currently reading?

MK:  "The Story of My Assassins" by Tarun J. Tejpal, a gritty thriller set in India and full of political commentary. It's a window into a totally different world.


Kathy: Will you share any of your hobbies or interests with us?

MK: I love to read, travel, write mysteries, cook, and study Italian.


Kathy: Name 4 items you always have in your fridge or pantry.

MK: Milk, flour, sugar, baby carrots. Sorry it's not a more interesting answer!


Kathy: Do you have plans for future books either in your current series or a new series?

MK: In my next installment in the series, Rita's twin sister asks for help drumming up interest in her newest real estate listing—a mothballed old mansion that was once a Prohibition-era speakeasy and FDR hangout. Rita throws herself into planning an over-the-top Jazz Age-themed soirée, dusting off her vintage recipes for lemon cake and oysters Rockefeller, casting her son Vinnie and his best friend Rocco as the G-men who will stage a “raid,” and even enlisting the culinary services of Rocco’s mom, the beautiful but troubled Fran, who has just been released from prison.

But when Vinnie and Rocco stage their “raid”, what they find in the old dairy barn behind the mansion isn’t moonshine…but a dead body.

The citizens of Acorn Hollow are eager to point the finger at Rocco and Fran, but Rita isn’t buying it. Like the multi-tasking mother she is, she’s determined to prove their innocence—all while mentoring a sulky teenaged intern, unmasking the identity of the newspaper’s new male advice columnist, and encouraging her daughter’s fledgling romance with a hunky Italian teacher.


Kathy: What's your favorite thing about being an author?

MK: I love living in this parallel universe and being able to write about it.

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Author Links: 

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/maureenkloverswrites/ 

Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5441376.Maureen_Klovers

Webpage: https://maureenklovers.wordpress.com/

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Review

A SECRET IN THYME by Maureen Klovers

The Second Rita Calabrese Culinary Mystery

The town of Acorn Hill is celebrating its tercentenary as Rita Calabrese contemplates her fortieth wedding anniversary. Sure, she's the best cook and gardener in town, but does that mean she should be making her own anniversary dinner? As her husband welcomes his ne'er do well cousin to stay with them, Rita dons her investigative reporter hat to cover the town's many festivities, including interviewing her old beau, who is now a historian, and the viewing the opening of a time capsule, buried fifty years earlier. While it's a surprise seeing Stefano after so many years, that's nothing compared to seeing a skeleton inside the capsule! As Rita works on her latest investigative piece she must dig up the past. Who was the victim? And who put the body in the town's time capsule?

What would you do to protect yourself? Someone else? Can you escape your past or will it always be there to haunt you? These are just some of the questions tackled in the second Rita Calabrese Culinary Mystery. Rita will hunt for the truth, aided by her chocolate-dipped peanut butter biscotti and unexpected help from her family.

I absolutely loved this book! While there's a great mystery it's the characters here that make A SECRET IN THYME memorable. Rita is not only a smart protagonist, she's a true matriarch; wise yet vulnerable, traditional, yet sassy. She's a ton of fun and I wish she was my neighbor. I'd love to benefit from her cooking and I'd especially like some of that strawberry cake! I enjoyed cringing, yet laughing at Calvino, smiling at the widow Schmalzgruben as she visits the cemetery to talk to her husbands, and gasping at the brash women Rita encounters.

A SECRET IN THYME is a funny mystery with depth wrapped in an Italian flag. Food, Family, and Fun could be the motto for this series. Food can reflect emotions, family can drive you batty while also providing support, and life, even when dealing with murder, should be fun.


Recipes included.