Culinary mysteries

I enjoyed the first few Goldy Schulz books by Diane Mott Davidson but the ridiculously over-the-top plotting eventually overcame my enjoyment of the cooking/catering aspects of the series. So I'm looking for recommendations for similar series that give lots of scrumptious detail to the foodie element but also have a mystery plot that has at least one foot in reality.

If you are interested in Singaporean cuisine, I really enjoy Ovidia Yu's Auntie Lee series, which starts with Auntie Lee's Delights. Auntie Lee runs a café.

Yes, when they don’t just devolve into a formula, they are fun to read.

I’ve read Earthly Delights, the first Corinna Chapman mystery. Corinna is a baker in Melbourne, Australia. I don’t recall how much the food was described, but she was a fun character to spend time with. I might need to read another, now that I’ve recalled it.

>2 tealadytoo: I don't know anything about Singaporean cuisine, but it sounds like this could be a good way to familiarize myself! I'll look to see if my library has it.

>3 2wonderY: Ah, I see this series is written by Kerry Greenwood, who also wrote another of my fave series, Phryne Fisher. I'll check it out.

Tagmash here: https://www.librarything.com/tag/cooking,+crime

The only obvious thing I recognised on that list was John Lanchester's The debt to pleasure, not from a series, but a good, slightly tongue-in-cheek, crime story with a lot of recipes in it, most of them unreliable in. some way.

I read some of Michael ("Paddington") Bond's Monsieur Pamplemousse series a long time ago, but don't remember much about them. I think they were mostly played for laughs, rather than realism.

Nicholas Freeling, who wrote the Van der Valk and Castang series (in the 70s and 80s) was a chef in his day-job: his novels aren't directly food-mysteries but they always have a lot of detail about food in them.

And of course, there's always Nero Wolfe. I get so hungry reading those mysteries. And I learned how to properly make scrambled eggs from those books.

Too Many Cooks

wisteria tearooms are fun, not massively detailed on the food, but enough to inspire.

>5 thorold: Thanks for the link. I had looked at the tagmash page but was looking for more qualitative recommendations rather than just a list. I'll check out the Lanchester and Freeling books — thanks!

>6 tealadytoo: Ah, Nero. I've read them all so many times and you are so right about the food mentions! One of these days I'm going to try that method of making scrambled eggs.

>7 reading_fox: It turns out I have the first book in that series in my ebook collection, so I'll have to pull it out and read it. I also love tea so that angle appeals very much as well — probably how I ended up with the book in the first place.

Especially for rich and exquisite "tastes": Peter Mayle's The Vintage Caper. Or, if your desires run to "cuisine art," try Chasing Cézanne .

A one-off, not a series, was a romantic suspense novel Foul Matter by Joan Aiken about a food writer trying to solve the death of her husband. Aiken's famous for her childrens' books but I have a soft spot for her melodramatic adult pulp fic.

I swear i put in brackets

>10 nessreader: I think the link you want is to Foul Matter. The other one goes to a Martha Grimes mystery with the same title.

>11 tealadytoo: oh thank you tealadytoo Those wretched twinned titles; I should have checked it.

Full disclosure: I've not read these, but I did a search in NoveList (a Reader Advisory site that my library subscribes to) and here's what I came up with:

Leslie Budewitz has two series that sound good: the Food Lover's Village series (Death al Dente is the first book) and the Spice Shop Mysteries series (Assault and Pepper is the first in that one).
Full list for those here: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/leslie-ann-budewitz/

The Noodle Shop Mystery series by Vivien Chien: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/vivien-chien/

The Tuscan Cooking School Mystery series by Stephanie Cole:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/stephanie-cole/

The Amish Candy Shop Mystery series by Amanda Flower:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/amanda-flower/
(Bonus: She's a college librarian here in Ohio!)

The Olive Grove Mystery series by Kelly Lane:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/kelly-lane/

Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery series by Mia Manansala (this one looks very new - there's one out now and the second due next year):
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/mia-p-manansala/

Another newish series: Cape Cod Foodie Mystery by Amy Pershing:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/p/amy-pershing/

The Singaporean Mystery series by Ovidia Yu:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/y/ovidia-yu/

I read Assault and Pepper; had forgotten. I thought the depiction of the marketplace and the business and characters was all well done.

>13 scaifea: Well, gosh. I wasn't expecting you to do research, but that's a nice list!

>14 2wonderY: Good to hear. I'll have to see if the library has it.

I just finished reading Miss Eliza's English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs. Not a really a mystery, but historical fiction. A pretty good read.