No Reservations Required (Sophie Greenway Series #8) »

ELLEN HART’s other novels include This Little Piggy Went to Murder, For Every Evil, The Oldest Sin, Murder in the Air, Slice and Dice, Dial M for Meat Loaf, and Death on a Silver Platter; and the Jane Lawless mysteries, which were launched with Hallowed Murder. A two-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Mystery/Detective Fiction and a four-time winner of the Lambda Book Award, Ms. Hart is like her fictional heroine Sophie Greenway in two respects: both have had food-related careers (the author was a chef for twelve years) and both have college degrees in fundamentalist Christian theology. She lives in Minneapolis.

A KILLER WAS FULLY COMMITTED

Twin Cities businessman Ken Loy is the first to die; shot between the eyes during a sunset bike ride. Half an hour later, Bob Fabian, the rich and handsome owner of the Minneapolis Times Register, meets a similar fate. It was a year ago when Loy broadsided the VW Beetle driven by Fabian’s wife, Valerie, killing her instantly. Coincidence? Sleuthing food critic Sophie Greenway doesn’t buy it.

Indeed, the elegant Rookery Club, where the upper crust gathers to drink, dine, and gossip, is already simmering with rumors–about the murders, about a Times Register reporter’s shameless fabrication of news stories, about rifts in two high-profile relationships. So when Sophie turns up the heat, the lethal bouillabaisse of twisted love, sadistic rage, and insatiable greed boils over. It seems that poisonous concoction murder du jour is back on the menu. . . .