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    The Tell-Tale Tarte
    The Tell-Tale Tarte
    The Tell-Tale Tarte
    Ebook291 pages5 hours

    The Tell-Tale Tarte

    By Maya Corrigan

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The life and work of Edgar Allan Poe spices up this culinary mystery from the author of Final Fondue. Includes recipes!
     
    It’s a cold January in the Chesapeake Bay area, but Cool Down Café manager Val Deniston has plenty to sweat over—like catering a book club event, testing recipes for her Granddad’s cookbook, and catching the author of a deadly tale of murder . . .

    The last thing Val needs in her life is an unsolved murder, especially when the victim, an actor famed for impersonating Edgar Allan Poe, happens to be dressed exactly like her Granddad. To keep an eye on Granddad, whose latest job takes him to the home of Rick Usher, a local author inspired by Poe, Val gets herself hired as a cook in Rick’s House of Usher. When she discovers the actor wasn’t the only one doing an impersonation, separating the innocent from the murderous becomes a real-life horror story. But Val must decipher a killer’s M.O. sooner rather than later . . . or she can forget about finding poetic justice.

    Includes 6 delicious five-ingredient recipes!
     
    Praise for the Five-Ingredient Mysteries
     
    “Cozy mystery readers will love the puzzle and the enjoyable look into this small tourist town by the sea.”—Nancy Coco, author of the Candy-Coated Mysteries
     
    “Suspects abound and the puzzle solution is deftly handled in this charming cozy . . . With recipes included, this is definitely a starter for fans of Diane Mott Davidson, Lou Jane Temple, and Virginia Rich.”—Library Journal
     
    “Corrigan keeps her simple mixture of pleasant characters, murder, and recipes in the oven.”—Kirkus Reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKensington Books
    Release dateJun 27, 2017
    ISBN9781496709189
    The Tell-Tale Tarte
    Author

    Maya Corrigan

    Maya Corrigan lives near Washington, D.C., within easy driving distance of Maryland's Eastern Shore, the setting for this series. She has taught courses in writing, detective fiction, and American literature at Georgetown University and NOVA community college. A winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense, she has published essays on drama and short stories under her full name of Mary Ann Corrigan. Visit her at mayacorrigan.com.

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    Reviews for The Tell-Tale Tarte

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      The Tell-Tale Tarte by Maya Corrigan is the fourth book in A Five-Ingredient Mystery series. Val Deniston is shocked when her grandfather, Don Myer comes home with a new look. She can tell that he up to something, but Granddad is claiming client confidentiality. Val is leaving the mall with her best friend, Bethany O’Shay when she sees a man resembling her grandfather collapse in the parking lot. The man, thankfully, is not her Granddad. The man does not survive, and he is dressed in Granddad’s new look (same haircut, glasses, hat, and clothes). What has Granddad gotten into this time? At dinner that evening with Gunnar, Val discovers the deceased is Emmett Flint. Emmett was an actor with the local theater group along with Gunnar. Gunnar, unfortunately, recently had an argument with the man and benefits from his death which puts him at the top of the suspect list. While catering a book club dinner, Val discovers Granddad’s new job. He was hired to impersonate Rick Usher. Was Emmett Flint hired to perform this task as well? Was the killer after Emmett, Granddad, or Rick Usher? Val soon finds herself embroiled in a mystery surrounding author, Rick Usher. To get closer to Usher, Val accepts a job as the families’ personal chef. Val needs to clear Gunnar’s name and keep her grandfather safe. When Val is not scouting for clues, she is working at the Cool Down Café, testing recipes for The Codger’s Cookbook (another one of Granddad’s projects), and exploring ways to get her contract on the café renewed. Will Val uncover the killer before he strikes again?I found The Tell-Tale Tarte to be a slow starter. I had a hard time finishing this cozy mystery. The pace starting out slow and failed to improve. There is a repetition of information. I find it annoying to find the same details repeated over and over. I have not been able to warm up to Val and her grandfather (or any of the characters). I felt that the characters are lacking in depth. Val is a hard character to like. She does not exude warmth or friendliness. The grandfather’s antics just got on my nerves. Why does it have to be one zany thing after another? I do not mind a little bit of quirkiness, but Granddad is over-the-top. He expects Val to support him in his subterfuge (which she does). My rating for The Tell-Tale Tarte is 3 out of 5 stars. The mystery was interesting, but uncomplicated and could be solved early in the story. The suspect pool is minute and the killer sticks out (might as well have been an arrow pointing at the individual). The subplot of Val’s café contract was too dominant in the book. The details about the contract and who would take over the space are mentioned frequently. The “romance” between Gunnar and Val does not feel real. It is like the author determined that there should be a romance in the book so she put it in. I just do not feel the connection or affection between them. I did enjoy the Poe references in the book. I am a fan of Edgar Allan Poe and his works (did a paper or two on him in college). There are recipes at the end of the book from the Codger.
    • 3/5
      This wasn't awful. It wasn't great, either, but it was entertaining, and a basically easy read. It's the fourth in a cozy series, and it does a good job at it: I pretty much got the gist of what I needed to know about the characters and the setting and so on pretty painlessly (though there were some issues of painful infodump), and I don't think the previous books were overly spoiled for me if I ever want to go back to them. (Spoiler: I probably won't.) The only thing I can really complain about, writing-wise, is the dialogue. People don't talk like this. I'm a weirdo who can't stop using the fifty-cent words in my arsenal (see?), used to getting the glazed look, and even I don't talk like this: "I can't imagine Granddad as docile as a Stepford wife." Or this: "'The next time you go out with Gunnar, wear something clingy and edgy in a bright color. It might add a spark to your stalled romance.'" (That one should be from an article in a bad women's magazine.) What happens is that heroine Val runs a café in a fitness club, and her grandfather is trying to create a career as an investigator (a "problem solver"). One afternoon, shopping with her (fat) friend, Val sees a man collapse in a parking lot, and he looks just like how her grandfather looked that morning, after a rather drastic makeover. (I specify that her friend is fat, because it was strongly stressed in the telling. Did I say I only had that one thing to complain about in the writing? My mistake.) It turns out that there is some deception going on, with Grandpa and, apparently, at least one other man impersonating a local big-time author called Rick Usher, who, unsurprisingly given his name, has a Poe fixation that probably could have used a good dose of some counter-obsessional medication. The other man, of course, is that fellow who collapsed – and, in fact, died. Was he murdered? Of course he was. The police don't think so, but Val is certain, and before you can say "cozy mystery" she's going undercover-like into Usher's house to see what she can find out. The fact that under the circumstances it seems extremely unlikely that the people who make up the Usher ménage would even consider bringing in an outsider, no matter how tired they were of frozen dinners. I probably shouldn't get as hung up as I do about things like the fact that this café Val runs inside a gym is supposed to offer logically healthy breakfasts and snacks and whatnot. And smoothies do get a mention – but, seriously, so do brownies, pecan muffins, cheddar cheese cookies, bread puddings, and a whole bunch of other baked goods that would instantaneously undo any good people might get out of their exercise. There are recipes at the back of the book, of course; I can't say I was overwhelmed with a desire to make any of them. I don't know; I was never convinced by Val as a professional cook, and it was never entirely believable that she did the cooking for the café. Or like the weird whiffs of misogyny that came up here and there: "Val would have run or yelled for help instead of swinging back, as most women would." Really? The other one I made a note of is Granddad's expressed opinion, but it was still like cookie crumbs in the bed: annoying. Or like the annoying repetitions of annoying things like "she dashed" (Val dashes about quite a bit) or "gobbled" (which might have only been used twice, but in my opinion that's two times too many) or Val pretending to tip a pretend hat in a peculiar little salute to her grandfather. I mean – try it. Go stand in front of a mirror and pretend to tip a hat which you're not actually wearing. Does it look like you're tipping a hat? Or does it just look like you're having a small seizure? Val does that at least twice, too. The story was … fine; the rest of the writing I'm not complaining about was … fine… I sighed over the extreme focus on Poe (a young man named Raven? Really? Help), but such is the way of the cozy. I only rather hope the rest of the books don't have Themes like this. The B-plot of Val trying to save her café in the face of the fitness club manager's plans to replace it with a clothing shop was not bad; I liked how she handled the opportunity to blackmail the manager. And I liked how the situation was resolved. The woman Val hires to help her is a refreshing change from the usual sort of character, with an interesting back story. I'm not sorry I read it; it entertained me while I was reading it (in between grumbles). I won't cross the street to avoid more in the series, but I also won't go out of my way to obtain them. The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
    • 4/5
      Val Deniston lives with her grandfather in Bayport, Maryland and runs a cafe in the local fitness club, and does catering on the side. While helping her friend Bethany search for a wedding dress, they see a man who resembles her grandfather's new look - black coat, beard, tinted glasses - and thinks it might be him. When the man falls in front of a car, she dashes toward him, relieved her fears were unfounded, but still helping give him CPR. Unfortunately, no amount of CPR could save the man, still unknown to her and the people nearby. Later that night she she finds out from her boyfriend Gunnar the man's name - Emmett Flint, an actor in the same troupe as Gunnar. When Val goes to her latest job, a book club, it's when she's serving dessert that she sees the "noted author" invited is not only not the author, it's her grandfather Don who, for some unknown reason, is impersonating Rick Usher, the author in question. Rick has made a career of writing in the style of Edgar Allan Poe and has quite a group of followers himself. But when she questions his assistant Clancy, also attending the dinner, she discovers only that 'Rick' is supposedly hoarse from an ailment and Clancy is answering all questions.As time progresses it is discovered that Emmett may not have died from natural causes, and Val is worried for her boyfriend Gunnar, who is the main suspect, and also her grandfather, who is now spending time with Rick himself. So when Val is offered a job catering dinners at Usher's home, she agrees in order to try and find out who killed Emmett and why. Will there be another murder or will poetic justice prevail? Val will have to move fast to find the answer...As a huge Poe fan, I once made a trip to Baltimore just to visit his grave, and own all his books (and wrote an essay on him while in school) so this book was one I was looking forward to reading. While the plot had interesting points, and I did like the fact we have the murder almost immediately - which is always a nice thing so you aren't subjected to pages and pages of needless detail - it also moved slowly for the first quarter of the book.Reading farther, I was somewhat torn; partly because her grandfather seemed a bit of a con man to me: he used her recipes to get a job writing a food column for the newspaper, and then expects to continue so he can write a cookbook. This did not endear me to the man, and grandfather or not, she should have set him straight about who gets the credit and where, especially since he's secretive on other things as well. He seemed more like a "user" than a loving grandfather. It also seemed like they were nothing more than business partners (and not very equal-sided, either). As for the relationship between Val and Gunnar, there doesn't seem to be any "oomph" attached. They just seemed boring when they were talking to each other.Eventually the suspect list was narrowed down to a select few, and then you have the meat of the story. Putting it together at the end was interesting, and it all came together nicely at last. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      THE TELL-TALE TARTE, the newest book in Maya Corrigan's Five-Ingredient Mystery series, has an imaginative, twisting plot that revolves around Edgar Allen Poe. Once again Val Dennison and her grandfather, Don Myer get themselves into some sticky, humourous situations while trying to solve a mystery.

      Val, who runs the cafe at the gym and caters on the side wonders why her grandfather has changed his look so drastically. He is very evasive with her, but tells her he has been hired for a PI job and he was paid for the changes. When Val sees a man, who looks like her grandfather collapse at the mall she hurries to his side to see that it is not him. The man dies and it turns out that her boyfriend Gunther not only knows him, but recently had a physical altercation with the man where he has pressed assault charges. Of course, Val is worried that Gunther might somehow be dragged into the situation. When it is determined that he died from unnatural causes, Val begins her sleuthing. She is also concerned that her grandfather looks so much like the dead man. Don, as it turns out, has been hired by a famous author's family to impersonate him when he does not make a public appearance. The author, Rick Usher, writes stories based on Edgar Allen Poe, but rather tongue in cheek.

      The relationship between Val and her grandfather is fun to read about. She moved in with him so he would not have to sell his house. He has taken on the food column in the paper, now called "The Codger Cook" but uses Val's recipes, sort of. He rewrites them using less than five ingredients. Some of his attempts are pretty funny. They love each other, but that does not mean they do not get on one another's nerves. It is a realistic relationship in most ways. Don was actually much more instrumental in solving the mystery in this book than in the others. Val is busy trying to build up the cafes business, helping her friend with her wedding plans, trying to help Granddad write his Codger Cookbook, catering as well as solving this mystery. She does not spend much time with Gunther in this story, but he is very busy as well. The other characters involved with the Usher family were a little strange. They were not really in the story much, but were talked about when the mystery was being solved. There were some surprises along the way, even though I was pretty sure of who the murderer was. It did start a little slower than some of her other books in this series, but once I got into it, it moved along at a nice pace. Another fun mystery with some pretty good recipes at the end of the book. A good read for cozy mystery lovers. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book via Netgalley.

    Book preview

    The Tell-Tale Tarte - Maya Corrigan

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