Isabelle "Betts" Winston teaches cooking at her
grandmother's cooking school, Gram's Country Cooking School,
located in Broken Rope, Missouri. The history of Broken Rope
is well-known - outlaws, bank robbers, hangings, etc.
Tourists come all summer to take in the history and see the
re-enactments that bring the history alive. To kick off the
tourist season, the Southern Missouri Showdown cook-off
takes place, which showcases the cooking students' best
dishes.
As the students gear up for the Showdown, the best-laid
plans are thrown for a loop when a body is discovered in the
supply closet of the cooking school. Even worse, the man's
widow accuses Gram of having killed him. While Gram and
Everett Morningside, owner of the local theater, were
seemingly close friends, no one believes that Gram actually
killed him... until she is arrested.
While Betts isn't a legal eagle, she is a law school drop-
out, so she knows her way around an investigation. She's
also savvy enough to hire the town's most intelligent and
assertive attorney to represent her grandmother while she's
under investigation. But since she isn't bound by the letter
of the law, she's free to use her own investigative
techniques. Aided by her best friend Jake (the town's
unofficial archivist) and Jerome (who happens to be a
ghost), she's determined to prove that her grandmother is no
cold-blooded killer.
When Betts and Jake become victims of a shooting incident
and other random acts of violence, they think they must be
on the right track. But they want to must find the killer
before Gram's reputation is unfairly smeared or their lives
are further endangered. But in their small town, who could
possibly be a cold-blooded killer?
IF FRIED CHICKEN COULD FLY is such a fun mystery that I
couldn't put it down. It originally appealed to me on
several levels - I was raised in Missouri, and my mom is a
retired cooking teacher. The ghost character threw me for a
loop, but by the end of the book, I had really warmed to him
and I hope to see him again. All of the characters in this
book were relateable, realistic, and full of Missouri charm.
The mystery itself was intriguing and the plot moved along
at a nice pace. I look forward to reading the next books in
the Country Cooking School Mystery series.
At Gram's Country Cooking School, Betts and Gram are
helping students prepare the perfect dishes for the
Southern Missouri Show-Down, the cook-off that draws the
first of the summer visitors. Everything is going smoothly
until they discover the body of local theater owner
Everett Morningside in the school's supply closet, and
Everett's widow points an accusatory finger at Gram. Now,
Betts has to dig deep into Broken Rope's history to find
the modern-day killer-before the last piece of chicken is
served...
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