#MidweekMystery: Wined and Died in New Orleans by Ellen Byron

It’s hurricane season in New Orleans and vintage cookbook fan Ricki James-Diaz is trying to shelve her weather-related fears and focus on her business, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbook and Kitchenware Shop, housed in the magnificent Bon Vee Culinary House Museum.

Repairs on the property unearth crates of very old, very valuable French wine, buried by the home’s builder, Jean-Louis Charbonnet. Ricki, who’s been struggling to attract more customers to Miss Vee’s, is thrilled when her post about the discovery of this long-buried treasure goes viral. She’s less thrilled when the post brings distant Charbonnet family members out of the woodwork, all clamoring for a cut of the wine’s sale.

When a dead body turns up in Bon Vee’s cheery fall decorations, the NOPD zeroes in on Eugenia Charbonnet Felice as the prime suspect, figuring that as head of the Charbonnet family, she has the most to gain. Ricki is determined to uncover the real culprit, but she can’t help noticing that Eugenia is acting strangely. Ricki wonders what kind of secret her mentor has bottled up, and fears what might happen if she uncorks it.

In the second Vintage Cookbook Mystery, Ricki has to help solve a murder, untangle family secrets, and grow her business, all while living under the threat of a hurricane that could wipe out everything from her home to Bon Vee.

About the Author


Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Bayou Book Thief will be the first book in her new Vintage Cookbook Mysteries. She also writes the Catering Hall Mystery series under the name Maria DiRico.

Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like WingsJust Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. An alum of New Orleans’ Tulane University, she blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America and will be the 2023 Left Coast Crime Toastmaster. Please visit her at https://www.ellenbyron.com/


Author Links

Purchase Links

Amazon – B&N – Kobo – Google Books – Alibris – IndieBound – PenguinRandomHouse

Photo by PxHere

#MidweekMystery: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron

A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron.

 

Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.

 

Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.

 

The skills Ricki has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki’s past as curator of a billionaire’s first edition collection comes back to haunt her.

 

Will Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success … or a recipe for disaster?


Review

Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries were a delight, and the series wrapped up satisfyingly. Happily, Ellen takes us back to Louisiana with a new series. Bayou Book Thief, the first installment of the new Vintage Cookbook mystery series, transports us to the heat, humidity, and hustle of New Orleans.

I love the way Ellen plays with the cozy mystery tropes we all know and love: Ricki (short for Miracle) James, a newly-widowed Los Angeles transplant, starts up a vintage cookbook – themed gift shop in the Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, in a historic mansion in the Garden District. Instead of big-city girl in the small town, our protagonist relocates to another big city (arguably, one with more personality and pizazz than Los Angeles). The circumstances of her widowhood are tragic, but at the same time darkly comical. Ricki’s mother is not the nagging matchmaker we know from other popular cozy series; Ricki’s parents are happily retired and too busy taking dance lessons to meddle with her life. And is this a book shop mystery, a culinary mystery, or an antique shop mystery? Why not all three at once?

One element that was satisfyingly to expectation was the murder: The discovery of the body is shocking but not gruesome, and the victim (mild spoiler here) will not be much missed. A mystery featuring an amateur sleuth needs to provide a good reason for the protagonist to get involved and not simply leave it to the police, and this is done deftly in Bayou Book Thief. Enough is at stake, including Ricki’s own livelihood, that she is inevitably drawn in to investigating the murder.

Bayou Book Thief is an enjoyable and well-plotted mystery with plenty of well-researched local detail and a satisfying conclusion. Warning: you may finish the book and find you have an irresistible craving for a Po’Boy. I’m looking forward to the next installment of the Vintage Cookbook Mystery Series, which is scheduled for release in February.

About the Author


Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Bayou Book Thief will be the first book in her new Vintage Cookbook Mysteries. She also writes the Catering Hall Mystery series under the name Maria DiRico.

Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like WingsJust Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. An alum of New Orleans’ Tulane University, she blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America and will be the 2023 Left Coast Crime Toastmaster. Please visit her at https://www.ellenbyron.com/


Author Links

Purchase Links

Amazon – B&N – Kobo – Google Books – Alibris – IndieBound – PenguinRandomHouse

#MidweekMystery It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder

Astoria, Queens, is decorated within an inch of its life for the Christmas season, and Mia Carina is juggling her job at the Belle View catering hall with a case of murder . . .

Mia’s busy with a full schedule of events at the family business—among them an over-the-top Nativity-themed first birthday party and a Sweet Sixteen for a teen drama queen. But her personal life is even more challenging. Her estranged mother has returned—and her lifelong friend Jamie has discovered a shocking secret about his past. He’s so angry that he starts hanging out with Lorenzo, who claims to be his long-lost brother—even after it becomes clear that Lorenzo’s story is as fake as a plastic Christmas tree.

Then a body turns up among the elves in a Santa’s-workshop lawn display, and amateur sleuth Mia has a buffet of suspects to choose from. Amid the holiday celebrations, she intends to find out who’s the guilty party . . .

Italian recipes included!


Maria DiRico / Ellen Byron

Maria DiRico / Ellen Byron

Catering Hall Mysteries

Maria DiRico is the pseudonym for Ellen Byron, author of the award winning, USA Today bestselling Cajun Country Mysteries. Born in Queens, New York, she is first-generation Italian-American on her mother’s side and the granddaughter of a low-level Jewish mobster on her father’s side. She grew up visiting the Astoria Manor and Grand Bay Marina catering halls, which were run by her Italian mother’s family in Queens and have become the inspiration for her Catering Hall Mystery Series. DiRico has been a writer-producer for hit television series like Wings and Just Shoot Me, and her first play, Graceland, appears in the Best Short Plays collection. She’s a freelance journalist, with over 200 articles published in national magazines, and previously worked as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart, a credit she never tires of sharing. A native New Yorker who attended Tulane University, Ellen lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and two rescue dogs. Sign up for her newsletter at https://www.ellenbyron.com/

Long Island Iced Tina | A Catering Hall Mystery | by Maria DiRico

Mia Carina is back in the borough of Queens—in charge of the family catering hall, Belle View Banquet Manor, and keeping her nonna company. But some events—like murder—are not the kind you can schedule . . .

Mia’s newly pregnant friend Nicole plans to hold a shower at Belle View—but Nicole also has to attend one that her competitive (and mysteriously rich) stepmother, Tina, is throwing at the fanciest place in Queens. It’s a good chance for Mia to snoop on a competitor, especially since doing a search for “how to run a catering hall” can get you only so far.

Mia tags along at the lavish party, but the ambience suffers at Nicole’s Belle View shower when a fight breaks out—and then, oddly, a long-missing and valuable stolen painting is unwrapped by the mom-to-be. Tina is clearly shocked to see it. But not as shocked as Mia is when, soon afterward, she spots the lifeless body of a party guest floating in the marina . . .

INCLUDES ITALIAN RECIPES!

Maria DiRico is the pseudonym for Ellen Byron, author of the award winning, USA Today bestselling Cajun Country Mysteries. Born in Queens, New York, she is first-generation Italian-American on her mother’s side and the granddaughter of a low-level Jewish mobster on her father’s side. She grew up visiting the Astoria Manor and Grand Bay Marina catering halls, which were run by her Italian mother’s family in Queens and have become the inspiration for her Catering Hall Mystery Series. DiRico has been a writer-producer for hit television series like Wings and Just Shoot Me, and her first play, Graceland, appears in the Best Short Plays collection. She’s a freelance journalist, with over 200 articles published in national magazines, and previously worked as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart, a credit she never tires of sharing. A native New Yorker who attended Tulane University, Ellen lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and two rescue dogs.

Header image Valeria Aksakova

#MidweekMystery Murder in the Bayou Boneyard by Ellen Byron

Maggie Crozat has the Halloween heebie-jeebies in USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron’s howlingly funny sixth Cajun Country mystery.

Maggie Crozat, proprietor of a historic Cajun Country B&B, prefers to let the good times roll. But hard times rock her hostelry when a new cell phone app makes it easy for locals to rent their spare rooms to tourists. With October–and Halloween–approaching, she conjures up a witch-crafty marketing scheme to draw visitors to Pelican, Louisiana.

Five local plantation B&Bs host “Pelican’s Spooky Past” packages, featuring regional crafts, unique menus, and a pet costume parade. Topping it off, the derelict Dupois cemetery is the suitably sepulchral setting for the spine-chilling play Resurrection of a Spirit. But all the witchcraft has inevitably conjured something: her B&B guests are being terrified out of town by sightings of the legendary rougarou, a cross between a werewolf and vampire.

When, in the Dupois cemetery, someone costumed as a rougarou stumbles onstage during the play–and promptly gives up the ghost, the rougarou mask having been poisoned with strychnine, Maggie is on the case. But as more murders stack up, Maggie fears that Pelican’s spooky past has nothing on its bloodcurdling present.


Ellen Byron

Ellen Byron

The Cajun Country Mysteries

Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won the Agatha award for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Her Catering Hall Mystery series, written as Maria DiRico, launched with Here Comes the Body and was inspired by her real life. She’s an award-winning playwright and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like WINGS, JUST SHOOT ME, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS, but she considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. A native New Yorker who attended New Orleans’ Tulane University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and rescue furbaby. Sign up for her newsletter at https://www.ellenbyron.com/

#Giveaway and Interview: Ellen Byron, Body on the Bayou

>>>Win a print copy of Body on the Bayou (US Only)<<<
The Crozats feared that past murders at Crozat Plantation B&B might spell the death of their beloved estate, but they’ve managed to survive the scandal. Now there’s a très bigger story in Pelican, Louisiana: the upcoming nuptials between Maggie Crozat’s nemesis, Police Chief Rufus Durand, and her co-worker, Vanessa Fleer.When everyone else refuses the job of being Vanessa’s Maid of Honor, Maggie reluctantly takes up the title and finds herself tasked with a long list of duties–the most important of which is entertaining Vanessa’s cousin, Ginger Fleer-Starke. But just days before the wedding, Ginger’s lifeless body is found on the bayou and the Pelican PD, as well as the Crozats, have another murder mystery on their hands.There’s a gumbo-potful of suspects, including an ex-Marine with PTSD, an annoying local newspaper reporter, and Vanessa’s own sparkplug of a mother. But when it looks like the investigation is zeroing in on Vanessa as the prime suspect, Maggie reluctantly adds keeping the bride-to-be out of jail to her list of Maid of Honor responsibilities in Body on the Bayou.


Q: Aloha, Ellen, and welcome back to Island Confidential! I really enjoyed Body on the Bayou, but for our readers who haven’t had the pleasure of reading it, why don’t  you tell us something about your protagonist, Maggie? 

A: Magnolia “Maggie” Crozat is a thirty-two year old Cajun/Creole artist who spent over a decade in Manhattan and has come home to Pelican, Louisiana after a painful breakup. She’s a fish out of water in her hometown, where residents seem to see her as “that artsy fartsy girl.” She divides her time between working at her family’s plantation-turned-B&B, working as a tour guide at another plantation, and pursuing her art career.

Q: How much of you is reflected in Maggie? 

A: Maggie has my dry sense of humor. And I’ve often felt like a fish out of water in life, so we share that. But we certainly don’t share a talent for art! I can barely draw stick figures. I think Maggie and I would be friends in real life. Except I’m not as hip as she is, LOL.

Q: Do your characters change and evolve throughout consecutive books in the series?

A: Oh, absolutely. Maggie becomes more secure in herself and her relationship with hot detective – they’re always hot, aren’t they? – Bo Durand. Her relationships with some frenemies change as well. I love create unexpected alliances.

Q: Have you ever thought of killing someone that you know in real life–on the pages of a murder mystery, I mean?

A: Fo sho! In fact, wanting to kill a coworker is what inspired me to try writing mysteries. I wrote a chapter of a book where I turned him into an odious character who got murdered. I worked out some inner demons, but the writing wasn’t very good, so I shelved that project. Happy to say that no one’s driven me that far since – except for the occasional political figure.

Q: How realistic is your setting? Do you take liberties, or are you true to life?

A: The actual town where I set my series, Pelican, Louisiana, is a fictionalized version of a real small town. The plantations are based on real location as well, and while I fictionalize the locations a bit, the settings are pretty close to the real thing. If I guided you to many of the areas that inspired me, you’d find the real-life locations pretty close to their made-up counterparts.

Q: You’ve written for hit TV shows like Wings and Just Shoot Me, so I know this question must have crossed your mind: When the movie or TV series is made, who plays the major parts?

A: Hah, I’ve asked myself this question many times! I see Anne Hathaway as Maggie, and Colin O’Donoghue from Once Upon a Time, my favorite TV series, as her boyfriend, Detective Bo Durand. And my dream casting for Gran’ would be Blythe Danner.

hathaway-danner

Q: What’s the worst and best advice you’ve heard or received as an author?

A: Honestly, nothing stands out as “best advice,” except for “put the funny word at the end of the sentence,” which has served me well as a sitcom writer. But I remember one specific lesson I learned that could classify as “worst advice.” I’d written a play inspired by my relationship with my great-aunt. After it was read in a writers group I belonged to, a member of the group who was way more established than me said he liked the play, but it would be much stronger if it was about the relationship between a girl and her father. I re-wrote the play… and completely lost my connection to it. He wasn’t giving a note. He was telling me how he would have written the play. That experience taught me to really distill and decipher notes so that they benefit my intentions and don’t throw me off course.

 


About The Author  
Ellen’s debut novel, PLANTATION SHUDDERS: A Cajun Country Mystery, has been nominated for an Agatha Best First Novel award, a Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery, and a Daphne Award for Best Mainstream Mystery. The second Cajun Country Mystery is BODY ON THE BAYOU, released September 2016. Ellen’s TV credits include Wings and Just Shoot Me; she’s written over 200 magazine articles; her published plays include the award-winning Graceland and Asleep on the Wind. Ellen Byron is a native New Yorker who lives in Los Angeles and attributes her fascination with Louisiana to her college years at New Orleans’ Tulane University.

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