A Sense for Murder - An Interview, Excerpt, & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome Leslie Karst to Cozy Up With Kathy today. Leslie writes the Sally Solari Mystery series. A Sense for Murder is the sixth book in the series and is being released today!

Kathy: Chef Sally Solari has a French-Polynesian restaurant. Is this one of your favorite cuisines?

LK: It is, indeed! I’ve long adored French food (can you say cream sauce?), and then—once I started spending time in Hawai‘i—came to discover the marvelous foods of the South Pacific, as well. And it was good fun coming up with the menu for Gauguin, the restaurant Sally inherits in book one of the series, as I got to play with all sorts of fun recipe ideas from both cuisines—things like Duck à la Lilikoi and Grilled Salmon with Papaya and Avocado Relish.


Kathy: In A Sense for Murder Sally gets the opportunity to volunteer at a farm-to-table dinner. I love the farm-to-table concept and eating locally. Have you been to a farm-to-table meal?

LK: I have, and they are so much fun—and so very delicious! The chance to try dishes prepared from ingredients produced within just a few miles (and sometimes a few hundred yards) of where you’re dining is truly special, and it’s wonderful to get to meet the farmers who’ve grown the vegetables and raised the sheep, chickens and pigs whose cheese, eggs, and meat you’re about to eat. If you’re ever given the chance to attend a farm-to-table dinner, I encourage you to do so!


Kathy: The event also has an auction featuring a signed boxset of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Are you a fan of Julia? I know I am!

LK: Very much so! I first encountered the French Chef back in the late ’60s, when she was a regular part of the PBS lineup on TV. I’d join my mother upstairs on my parents’ bed to watch the show, and as Mom took notes on a pad of paper, scribbling down recipes for use at future dinner parties, I’d gape open-mouthed at this big, boisterous, woman slapping butter on chickens as she laughed and recounted tales of her days in Paris.

And then later, after I bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and started trying out the recipes for myself, I became even more of a fan. (Yes, her multi-page method for making coq au vin is rather time-consuming, but preparing the mushrooms and onions separately to add at the end—thereby allowing them to retain their own special flavors—makes for a truly remarkable dish.)


Kathy: I happen to collect cookbooks, though I rarely cook from them. Do you have a cookbook collection?

LK: I don’t have an enormous cookbook collection—and the older I get, the less I use recipes when I cook. (I’m more a seat-of-the-pants style cook, adding this and that until something tastes good.) But I do have a lot of cookbooks from my younger days, which I still treasure: In addition to MtAoFC, some of my favorites include Craig Clairborne’s New York Times Cookbook, my mother’s 1946 edition of The Joy of Cooking, the Time-Life Foods of the World series, and The Graham Kerr Cookbook (aka the Galloping Gourmet), which is a hoot-and-a-half. (I used to watch The Galloping Gourmet on TV with my grandmother, who had a bit of a crush on the wine-tippling celebrity chef).


Kathy: What first drew you to cozy mysteries?

LK: I first started reading Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers as a teenager, and they whetted my appetite for smart-yet-not-gory mystery novels where the character development is as important as the puzzle. Then, years later, I discovered Diane Mott Davidson: Really? There are mystery novels centered around food? And I was hooked.


Kathy: Do you write in any other genres?

LK: I have a memoir that came out in April called Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG, which I like to describe as a true-life Julie and Julia meets Notorious RBG mash-up. It’s the story of how finagling my way into hosting an intimate dinner party for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sends me on a journey of culinary discovery—and, ultimately, completely changes my life.


Kathy: Tell us about your series.

LK: In the Sally Solari mysteries, which take place in the beautiful beach town of Santa Cruz, California. Sally, a fourth generation Italian American, has found herself caught between two cultures—that of her father’s traditional Italian seafood eatery, and that of the newly arrived “foodies,” whose food revolution has taken the old-generation Italian fishermen and restaurateurs completely by surprise. Throw a few dead bodies into the mix and Sally’s once peaceful life heats up like a cast iron skillet over an open flame!


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

LK: I’m awfully partial to Sally, which is a good thing, since I write her in the first person. But in many ways, Sally’s Aunt Letta—whom I killed off in chapter one of the first book in the series—is the one closest to my heart. Letta was the black sheep of the Solari family, leaving town to work at the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, then traveling the South Pacific, and finally coming back to Santa Cruz to open her French-Polynesian restaurant, Gauguin. She was feisty, witty, and loved nothing more than whipping up a cheese soufflé or batch of Schezwan shrimp, then sitting down to dinner with a nice bottle of wine to talk the evening through.

And I’ve regretted killing her off, ever since I did so in that first book. As a result, I use this newest book in the series as a way to bring Letta back—at least in Sally’s mind: Sally misses Letta so very much that she starts to wonder, what if it were possible to communicate with her dead aunt? Not that she really believes that woo-woo stuff, she chides herself, but....what if...?


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

LK: As soon as I decided to try my hand at writing a mystery novel, I knew that I wanted it to be set in Santa Cruz, and that it should concern food.

Up until the late 1960s, Santa Cruz was a sleepy coastal community, home mostly to Italian fishermen and retirees. In the past few decades, however, along with the advent of techies and hipsters, the food revolution has descended full-force upon the surprised old-timers. One day while I was wandering down the town’s historic fisherman’s wharf, brainstorming ideas for my murder mystery, it hit me: What would happen if a local Santa Cruz gal found herself caught between the world of her family’s old-fashioned Italian seafood restaurant, and that of the newly-arrived, politically-correct foodies? Yes! I thought. The perfect backdrop for a culinary mystery!


Kathy: What made you decide to publish your work?

LK: Once I had the finished writing first book, I knew I wanted to get it out into the world, for what’s the point of telling a story that no one other than you can hear?


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

LK: Oscar Wilde, Julia Child, Sue Grafton, and William Shakespeare (so I could settle once-and-for-all whether it was in fact the Bard of Stratford who penned those plays and poems, or someone else such as Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford—who Sally’s English lit. professor pal Allison is convinced is the true author). Yes, it will be an odd combination of people, but I guarantee we’ll have a grand old time!


Kathy: What are you currently reading?

LK: Mastering the Art of French Murder, by Colleen Cambridge, in which Julia Child assists the protagonist in solving a murder in Paris. (Do you detect a certain “Julia” theme in my life?)


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

LK: Besides cooking, eating, reading, and writing, some of my other interests include cycling, gardening, walking my Jack Russell mix, Ziggy, and observing cocktail hour promptly at five o’clock with my wife, Robin.


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

LK: Sriracha hot sauce, cottage cheese, peanut butter, and coffee.


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

LK: I’m excited to announce that I just signed a two-book contract with Severn House Publishers for a new series—The Orchid Isle Mysteries—set on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, where I live half time. The first book, Molten Death, will release next spring:

Valerie Corbin, a retired caterer, comes to the Big Island of Hawai‘i with her wife Kristen in search of rest and recreation following the loss of her brother and her own brush with death. Then Kristen’s surfing buddy, tattooed local boy Isaac, suggests something far more exciting than lazing on the beach: a hike out to the active lava flow. But when Valerie alone witnesses a body being blanketed by the hot flowing lava and no one else believes her, she becomes consumed by the mystery of the body in the lava, determined to discover what happened. Thrown into a Hawaiian culture far from the luaus and tiki bars of glossy tourist magazines, Valerie soon begins to fear she may be the next one to end up entombed in shiny black rock. 

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

LK: Getting to meet readers at conventions, book signings, and talks! You are the reason I write, and I thank you one and all for buying our books, checking them out of the library, telling friends about them, and writing reviews. 

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 A Sense for Murder (A Sally Solari Mystery) by Leslie Karst

About A Sense for Murder

A Sense for Murder (A Sally Solari Mystery)
Cozy Mystery 6th in Series
Setting - California
Severn House (August 1, 2023)
Hardcover: ‎ 224 pages

Chef Sally Solari has - to her own bewilderment - built a reputation as a talented sleuth who keeps tripping over dead bodies. But getting mixed up in the curious case of a cookbook killer threatens to be the final chapter in not just her investigating career . . . but her life.

It's the height of the tourist season in Santa Cruz, California, and Sally Solari has her hands full, both juggling crowds of hungry diners at her French-Polynesian restaurant Gauguin, as well as appeasing her father, who's distressed at the number of homeless people camped out in front of Solari's, the family's Italian seafood restaurant out on the historic fisherman's wharf.

Nevertheless, when Sally gets the opportunity to volunteer at a farm-to-table dinner taking place at the hip new restaurant and culinary bookshop Pages and Plums, she seizes the chance. Not only is it a fundraiser for an organization aiding the homeless and seniors, but up for auction at the event is a signed boxset of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Sally's hero, the renowned chef Julia Child.

But then the Pages and Plums dining room manager turns up dead - the locked cabinet containing the precious books now empty - and the irrepressible Sally once again finds herself up to her neck in a criminal investigation. She may have a sense for murder, but can Sally outwit a devious killer with a taste for French cooking before the villain makes mincemeat of her, too?

A Sense for Murder is a fast-paced, super fun culinary cozy mystery that will have your brain working and your mouth watering. And if you haven't met sleuthing chef Sally yet, it's safe to jump right in.

EXCERPT

If not for the clatter of my bicycle bouncing down the wooden planks of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, I felt certain that every tourist I whizzed past would have been startled by the loud rumblings emanating from my empty stomach.

I’d set off on my morning ride with only a cup of coffee for sustenance, and the effects of the initial caffeine buzz had now been replaced by a severe case of low blood sugar. As a result (notwithstanding the million-dollar view of the historic fisherman’s wharf stretching out from the sparkling beach and the iconic roller coaster rising up behind), the only thing on my mind at that moment was the prospect of biting into one of my father’s famous ricotta-and-mascarpone-filled cannoli.

I spotted Dad’s tall, stocky figure standing in front of Solari’s Restaurant as soon as I rounded the bend near the end of the wharf. He was turned toward me, waving, so I waved back, then quickly grabbed hold of my handlebars as I hit a nasty bump in the road. Once closer, however, I realized he wasn’t waving at me. He hadn’t even noticed my arrival. Rather, he was shouting and gesticulating at a form sprawled on the sidewalk at the corner of the building.

‘Why the hell do you insist on camping out here?’ I heard him yell as I approached. ‘You and your kind are driving away my business!’

Wheeling up to the front entrance, I clipped out of my pedals and leaned my red-and-white road bike against the restaurant’s whitewashed wood siding. Through the neon Budweiser and Amstel Light signs hanging in the window above, I could see a table of early lunchers chowing down on plates of crab salads and linguine.

‘Hey, Dad. What’s going on?’

‘Sally.’ He turned to me with a frown. ‘I didn’t hear you ride up.’

‘Probably because you were making quite a bit of racket yourself.’

The person at his feet – a thin, gray-haired man wrapped in a dark green sleeping bag – pushed himself to an upright position and regarded the two of us with dull eyes. A fat seagull pecked at a discarded French fry not three feet from where he sat.

Dad returned the man’s gaze with an angry stare. ‘I’ve been trying for five full minutes to get this guy to move his sorry ass away from my restaurant, but he pretends like he doesn’t even hear me. Maybe I should just call the cops on you,’ he said to the cocooned man, ‘and let them deal with it.’

‘Maybe if you tried treating him like a human being, your powers of persuasion would be a little more effective,’ I responded. ‘I mean, really: “you and your kind”?’ But my father merely shook his head and turned to walk back inside Solari’s, clearly now annoyed not only with the guy in the sleeping bag but also his only daughter.

 

About Leslie Karst

Leslie Karst is the author of the Lefty Award-nominated Sally Solari mystery series and Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG. After years waiting tables and singing in a new wave rock band, she decided she was ready for a “real” job and ended up at Stanford Law School. It was during her career as an attorney that Leslie rediscovered her youthful passion for food and cooking and once more returned to school—this time to earn a degree in culinary arts. Now retired from the law, Leslie spends her time cooking, cycling, gardening, observing cocktail hour promptly at five o’clock, and of course writing. She and her wife split their time between Santa Cruz, California, and Hilo, Hawai‘i.

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