It's winter in Key West, but things are heating up: the island's Harry Truman Little White House is hosting an unprecedented gathering of Cuban and American leaders, in hopes of warming relations between the two countries. Key Zest food critic and avid eater Hayley Snow has a front-row seat to the event, since her mother, Janet, is the caterer. But between the main course and the homemade flan, one of Janet's helpers is found murdered, and Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize medal goes missing. The dead man's relatives beg Hayley to use her amateur sleuthing skills to clear his name of the theft and find the killer. In her eighth Key West food critic mystery, Death on the Menu, Lucy Burdette serves up a feast of clues and confusion.
Readers of Burdette's series will recognize many familiar faces: Miss Gloria, Hayley's spry octogenarian roommate; her tarot-card-reading pal Lorenzo; her strong-and-silent boyfriend, Detective Nathan Bransford; and of course the island itself. Burdette's love for Key West and its food, especially Cuban sandwiches, comes through in every chapter, as Hayley races her scooter around the island in pursuit of a murderer. Several recurring plot threads, such as low-level tension at Key Zest and Hayley's problems communicating with Nathan, are well worn by now. But Hayley is an engagingly nosy narrator, and Burdette's descriptions of mouthwatering food and quirky locals are reliably entertaining. The recipes at the end include mojitos and flan--but, fortunately, death doesn't make a second appearance. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams