Ellen Byron: Vintage Cookbook Mystery Series

Today I’ll be writing about yet another highly recommended Cozy by site readers, in this case the first entry in Ellen Byron‘s Vintage Cookbook Mystery Series, and as always I will be starting with the first entry, Bayou Book Thief.

Regular site readers are likely aware that I have already featured two other series by Ellen Byron – first, the Cajun Country Mystery Series and second, the Catering Hall Mystery Series, written under the pen name Maria DiRico. Well, that’s no surprise – after all, this is the “most popular and recommended series”, and these have all been very highly recommended series over the years!

This particular series stars Ricki James, 28 year old widow restarting her life in her home city of New Orleans after the death of her actor husband and the disastrous ending of her last job after her previous employer was for a Ponzi scheme. Ricki hopes to be part of the opening of the ‘Bon Vee Culinary House Museum’ by running the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. The Bon Vee Museum celebrates the legendary (fictional) restauranteur Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet (based on real-world figure Ella Brennan). This really highlights one of the strengths of this book – while some details might be changed, it really takes advantage of the local flavor of Louisiana and particularly New Orleans. So many Cozies are set in small rustic towns that a change of pace to a big city can be very interesting – particularly one with as much history and as specific a culture as New Orleans.

There are few downsides to this new dream job for Ricki, and she quickly proves to get along well with almost all of her fellow employees, a colorful cast of eccentric tour guides and museum staff… with one big exception in curmudgeonly tour guide, Franklin. There are many of Ricki’s fellow employees (and quite a few others outside the Museum) who feel the same way, so no one is particularly upset when Franklin is caught trying to steal shop merchandise and is promptly fired. Naturally, this being a Cozy, it isn’t long before Franklin turns up again – dead in a box that should contain donated books.

As I have for other the other series I’ve written about by Ellen Byron, I would say that the quality of the writing is really the biggest draw to this book. If you’re looking for an extremely well written Cozy with an interesting setting that isn’t a small town or village, I strongly recommend Bayou Book Thief. 

As always, if you want to read more of these brief discussions of some of the more popular Cozy Mystery Series that I’ve written in the past, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page.

PS: For those vintage food fans out there, this book does include several recipes at the end featuring vintage dishes