For fans of:  Joyce and Jim Lavene
 
Lulu Taylor is the proprietress of Aunt Pat’s, a family-run BBQ restaurant located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee where people gather to share food and gossip.  Lulu never knows what’ll be the topic du jour of her friends and customers, but lately it seems the whole restaurant is abuzz about two things in particular: the fact that her rich, multiply divorced friend Evelyn is once again dating Adam Cawthorn (one of her smarmy ex-husbands), and that a food critic writing under the name “Eppie Currian” has been dishing out scathing reviews of local restaurants – Aunt Pat’s, included.  At first the gossip is relatively good-natured, but then it’s discovered that not only is Evelyn’s ex cheating on her, but that he and Eppie Currian are one and the same, and things take a turn for the nasty.  Evelyn is furious with Adam for cheating on her. Memphis’ chefs – including the one at Aunt Pat’s – are livid at Adam for trying to sink their businesses with his reviews. The former restaurant critic at the paper hates Adam for stealing his job. And it appears that Adam and his not-yet-ex-wife Ginger have been blackmailing people all over town.  So it’s hardly a surprise when Adam turns up dead.  The only question is, whodunit?
 
Finger Lickin’ Dead is the second in author Riley Adams’ Memphis BBQ Mystery series.  I had high hopes for this book; I love barbeque almost as much as I love mysteries, so how could something combining the two possibly disappoint? Unfortunately, however, I found Finger Lickin’ Dead to be a decidedly mediocre read.  The mystery is dull, the plot is unfocused, and the pacing is glacial. The stakes are practically non-existent (the police don’t seem all that keen to arrest anyone, neither Lulu nor any of her friends appear to be in any danger, and nobody liked the dead folks, anyway), and the book is lacking in drama, tension, and narrative drive. The storyline of the book is a digressive nightmare; more than half the scenes have absolutely nothing to do with the central mystery and do very little to forward the plot. The prose is stilted and lacking in flow. And the dialogue just doesn’t ring true.
 
The character development is practically non-existent.  Lulu is nominally the main character of this tale (Adams changes the narrative point of view so frequently it’s dizzying), but the reader never really gets to know her at all.  For some reason that’s never really made clear, she’s asked by a couple of people to look into Adam’s murder, but her investigative efforts are weak at best and consist mainly of her listening to her friends say, “I didn’t do it! But I think I know who did…”  The supporting cast is too large, and the characters are either completely over-the-top (Exhibit A: Lulu’s friend Cherry, who wears an Elvis helmet everywhere she goes because “life is too dangerous to face without a helmet”) or so generic as to be interchangeable.

Beale Street in Memphis is a fabulous setting for a book, and I love the idea of a BBQ-themed mystery series, but Finger Lickin’ Dead is somehow less than the sum of its parts.  If you’re looking for a new culinary mystery to read, I suggest you look to one of the other June releases; low and slow might be the secret to good BBQ, but it doesn’t make for a terribly compelling murder mystery. 

~ Kat