Cook the Books (Gourmet Girl Series #5) »

Jessica Conant-Park graduated from Macalester College and has a master of social work degree from Boston College.
Susan Conant is Jessica's mother and author of the Dog Lover's Mysteries and the Cat Lover's Mysteries.

This Gourmet Girl has to take the heat-because she just can't get away from the kitchen.

Chloe Carter desperately needs a job, so she takes one assisting a cookbook writer. Unfortunately it stirs up painful memories of her ex- boyfriend Josh, who left her for Hawaii. While compiling a book of recipes from Boston's top chefs, she comes in contact with one of Josh's friends, Digger. Chloe manages to stay cool until later she finds Digger's apartment charred-with Digger in it.

Not believing that an expert chef would die from a grease fire, she sets about looking for Digger's killer. But things get sticky when the tragedy brings Josh back to Boston-and back into Chloe's life.

Publishers Weekly

Conant-Park and Conant’s cookie-cutter fifth Gourmet Girl mystery with recipes (after 2009’s Fed Up) finds foodie Chloe Carter heartbroken. Her boyfriend, Josh Driscoll, who’s left Boston for a job as a private chef in Hawaii, has invited her to join him there, but Chloe can’t desert friend Adrianna, who recently had a baby, or drop out of her master’s program in social work. In need of money, Chloe becomes the assistant to a cookbook writer, Kyle Boucher, who wants her to visit Boston area restaurants and collect recipes from their chefs. Kyle’s unpleasant father, a celebrity chef, will lend his name to the book. When Chloe arrives for a meeting with Digger, an up-and-coming chef who happens to be a friend of Josh’s, she discovers Digger has died in a fire in his Somerville apartment. Cats provide comfort. Some readers may wish Chloe fretted less about her love life and did more sleuthing. (Mar.)