Cooked to Death: Tales of Crime and Cookery

by Rhonda Gilliland (editor), Michael Allan Mallory (Editor)

Includes a selection of recipes for dishes mentioned in individual stories.

207 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2016

About the author

Editor Rhonda Gilliland was voted Best Home Cook of October 1998 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She co-edited Cooked to Death: Tales of Crime and Cookery. She wrote, produced, and directed Come and Get Your Love, a Native American thriller. She is a member of Twin Cities Sisters in Crime, and served as president from 2012-2015. A Yelper since 2008. A St. Paul, MN resident, she lives with her husband, a Russian Orthodox Deacon, and tabby, Stryper.

Reviews

[Marlene Chabot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great short mystery stories. A wonderful mixture of authors and protagonists. Stories are cleverly written around a specific food like Red Velvet Cake, Zucchini bread, and Nut Goodie Bars. Real recipes included.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous collection of murder mystery stories, all linked to food and cooking. A must have Minnesota anthology.

[Skjam! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let’s return to the world of themed anthologies, a quick way to get a sample of various authors writing on a particular topic. In this case, it’s primarily Minnesota and other Midwestern writers doing crime and mystery short stories around the topic of food. Each story comes with a recipe, though whether that recipe actually is more than a mention in the story is wildly variable. Let’s dig in to these 17 dishes!

The book is arranged by type of recipe: appetizers, soups, entrees and desserts–heavy on the desserts. As might be expected from a food-based anthology, allergies are featured in several of the stories.

The opening story is “Shrimp Charmoula” by Carl Brookins. A private eye and his sweetie suffer a seemingly random home invasion. (This seems unlikely, and most likely there’s more to it that’s not in the story itself.) The title dish plays a part when one invader’s gluttony gets ahead of their common sense.

The closing story is “Just Desserts” by Michael Allan Mallory. A chef tries to take a relatively subtle revenge on a callous food critic, but he figures out who she is, and things go from bad to worse.

Some standouts in between:

“Dog Eat Dog” by David Housewright: A gangster abuses his pet as well as his underlings. This backfires spectacularly.

“Festival of Death” by Rhonda Gilliland which slightly fictionalizes a Saint Paul cultural fair (I have been to it and recognized the venue). The main subtheme is conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in 1995, which has resonance in the present day. (Other ethnic conflicts are mentioned.)

“He’s Not Dead Yet” by Jess Lourey has an old woman with a practical joker streak notice that things don’t look quite right at a funeral and investigating via a series of pranks. A little too mean to be really funny, but an interesting approach.

A couple of the stories veer into fantasy; I won’t spoil which ones.

All the stories are very short, which causes some to be more slight than I’d prefer, but does mean they’re over quickly. The local flavor makes the collection more savory to upper midwest folks, and I see that there’s already a sequel collection.

Content note: Murder, suicidal ideation, infidelity, animal abuse. Older teens on up should be able to handle it, but the anthology is aimed at middle aged folks on up.

Recommended to mystery fans who can cook–this one would make a nice gift for someone who does not have a lot of time for reading because of the bite-sized stories.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great collection of short mystery stories by several authors. Each story includes a recipe too. My favorite story was by carl Brookins Shrimp Charmoule (A Killer Dish) even the shrimp recipe sounds yummy.

[Orit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this collection of short stories because I know one of the authors. I'm not a huge crime readers so I was presently surprised at how many of these stories I enjoyed and two of them blew me away. There were all well written, but several of them seemed to be part of a bigger series and I felt like I was supposed to already know the characters.

Stand outs: Matzah Ball Mystery; Nut Goodies

Really enjoyable: Festival of Death; Details, A Fare to Remember; Natural, 100% Organic Murder; Murder with Crow; Just Desserts.

[Michael Mallory]

Not fair to rate a book I edited.

[Jessica Ellis Laine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm in this anthology so my rating might be biased but I really enjoyed the other writers' stories. Fun, fast read.

[Chris Norbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong collection of short stories by Minnesota authors who are/were members of Sisters in Crime. The fictional stories revolve around crimes related in some way to food and cover a wide range of "typical" Minnesota dishes and devious crimes. The group of authors came up with inventive story ideas across the board and as a whole, show solid writing skill and craft. The bonus is getting a recipe at the end of each story, some of which got my mouth watering.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an anthology so there were some hits and some misses. I plan to check out a few authors whose stories I really enjoyed.

[Linda]

This is a fantastic collection of mystery stories! I love that the focus of all of them had to be food - there are lots of recipes and oh, some stories might spoil your appetite just a bit.
Some great writers are collected here, including David Housewright, Susan Koefod, and more. I really love these Minnesota crime concept anthologies!