Six Feet Deep Dish - A Review

 Review

SIX FEET DEEP DISH by Mindy Quigley
The First Deep Dish Mystery 

Opening a restaurant is stressful, even for experienced chef Delilah O’Leary. While her gourmet pizza recipes are practically perfect and her sous chef and bartender top rate, her wealthy fiance is a bit too laid back leading to a huge blowout. Despite his leaving, the restaurant's soft opening is going well, but when Delilah storms off to catch her wayward server she instead finds her elderly aunt with a gun in her hand and a man dead at her feet. Under a shade of suspicion, with her fiance missing, the restaurant unable to open, and no access to funds Delilah figures she better find the killer quick, before she's out of business for good.

 

I absolutely adored the first Deep Dish Mystery. I love the fact that Delilah O’Leary is a professional chef. She's a perfectionist who is attentive to detail, has no tolerance for fools or slackers, and has a volcanic temper. Traits also useful in solving crimes...well, not the temper part. Her character and the restaurant culture depicted here are so true to life I half wonder if the author spent time in the restaurant industry herself. I appreciate the fact that the characters found here are a little bit different from the average cast of cozy characters. Not only do we have a hot tempered chef as a protagonist, but a flighty new age fiance, a detective with a unique family history, a restaurant full of intriguing personalities, and a big cat named Butterball. I have a particular fondness for Butterball and Rabbit.

 

Descriptions of food throughout the book had me salivating and craving pizza, although, to be honest, I am not a fan of the deep dish variety. But don't tell Delilah. Be sure to read the recipes included at the end of the book, even if you never intend to make them. Various characters share the recipes in their own words and had me laughing out loud even as my mouth was watering! 

 

With a nod to old time Chicago mobsters SIX FEET DEEP DISH serves up a great mystery sprinkled with humor and spiced with good food. This crisply written novel with an intriguing and thought provoking murder is a phenomenal start to a new series.