Key West Food Critic Mystery

Hayley Snow's life has always revolved around food, but when she applies to be a food critic for a Key West style magazine, she discovers that her new boss will be Kristen Faulkner, the woman Hayley caught in bed with her boyfriend! Hayley thinks things are as bad as they can get...until the police pull her in as a suspect in Kristen's murder. Kristen was killed by a poisoned key-lime pie. Now Hayley must find out who used meringue to murder before she takes all the blame...

The annual Key West Loves Literature seminar is drawing the biggest names in food writing from all over the country, and Haley Snow is there to catch a few fresh morsels of insider gossip. Superstar restaurant critic Jonah Barrows has already ruffled a few foodie feathers with his recent tell-all memoir, and as keynote speaker, he promises more of the same jaw-dropping honesty. But when Hayley discovers Jonah's body in a nearby dipping pool, the cocktail-hour buzz takes a sour turn, and Hayley finds herself at the center of attention, especially with the police. Now it's up to her to catch the killer before she comes to her own bitter finish.

Hoping for some good publicity, Hayley's boss at Key Zest magazine signs her up to help judge the Key West Topped Chef contest. Stakes are high as the winner could be the next cooking, show superstar. Hayley shows up for the filming nervous but excited, until she sees who's on the judging panel with her: Sam Rizzoli, big shot businessman, and owner of the restaurant she just panned in her first negative review. When Rizzoli turns up dead, the police assume his killer is one of his business rivals. But Hayley wonders whether someone is taking the contest a little too seriously. With the police following the wrong recipe, it's up to Hayley to find the killer before she's eliminated from the show...permanently.

For better or worse, Hayley has agreed to bake over 200 cupcakes for her friend Connie's wedding while still meeting her writing deadlines. The last thing she needs is family drama. But her parents come barreling down on the island like a category 3 hurricane, and on their first night in town her stepbrother, Roby, disappears into the spring-break party scene in Key West. When Hayley hears that two teenagers have stolen a jet ski, she sets aside her oven mitts and goes in search of Rory. She finds him, barely conscious, but his female companion isn't so lucky. Now Hayley has to let the cupcakes cool and assemble the sprinkles of clues to clear her stepbrother's name, before someone else gets iced.

It may be Christmastime, but thoughts of peace on earth, goodwill toward men don't seem to extend to the restaurant biz. Hayley has been assigned to interview Edel Waugh, chef/owner of Key West's hottest new restaurant. But off the record, Edel reveals someone's sabotaging her kitchen and asks Hayley to investigate. Things heat up fast when the restaurant is set on fire, and a body is discovered in the charred wreckage. Is someone out to destroy the chef's business, or actually kill her? Amid holiday festivities like the lighted boat parade and visiting relatives who stir up mixed emotions, Hayley needs to smoke out an arsonist and a killer who may turn up the heat on her next...

Hayley Snow looks forward to reviewing “For Goodness Sake”, a new floating restaurant that promises a fresh take on Japanese delicacies like flambéed grouper with locally sourced seaweed. But nearby land-based restaurateurs would rather see their buoyant competition sink. Sent to a City Commission meeting to cover the controversy, Hayley witnesses another uproar. The quirky performers of the daily Sunset Celebration are struggling to hold onto their performance space. The fight for Mallory Square has renewed old rivalries between Hayley's Tarot-card reading friend Lorenzo and a flaming-fork-juggling nemesis, Bart Frontgate, but things take a deadly turn when Bart is found murdered. If Lorenzo could read his own cards, he might draw The Hanged Man. He can only hope that Hayley draws Justice as she tries to clear him of murder...

Every year, Key West's week long Mardi Gras—style festival has tourists and locals alike lining up for costumed revelry and delicious eats. Key Zest magazine has assigned Hayley to write a piece on the fest's grab-and-go food, so she's planning on hitting up the mobile eateries while checking out the party preparations. Hayley's office mate, Danielle, recently elected Queen of Fantasy Fest, is also buzzing between festivities and fundraisers. But when a former royal rival gets taken out, Hayley needs to put down her party hat and her pen and figure out who served up a side of murder, before Danielle gets crowned a killer...

When a killer strikes just before flan time, beloved food critic Hayley Snow is forced to sniff out the killer before someone else bites the dust. Hayley Snow, fiery food critic for Key Zest magazine, has just landed a ticket to one of the most prestigious events in Key West: a high-brow three-day conference at the Harry Truman Little White House. Even though she'll be working the event helping her mother's fledgling catering business, there's plenty of spicy gossip to go around. But just before her mother's decadent flan is put to the test, Key West's most prized possession, Hemingway's Nobel prize gold medal for The Old Man and the Sea, is discovered stolen from its case. Unsavory suspicions point to Gabriel, a family friend and one of the new busboys working the event, who mysteriously goes missing moments later. Anxious to clear his name, Gabriel's family enlists Hayley to help find him, but right as they begin their search, his body is found stabbed to death in the storeroom. Hayley has no shortage of suspects to interrogate and very little time before the killer adds another victim to the menu in national bestselling author Lucy Burdette's delectable eighth Key West Food Critic mystery, Death on the Menu.

Nationally bestselling author Lucy Burdette's intrepid food critic Hayley Snow must sniff out a killer in the ninth Key West Food Critic mystery. Key West food critic Hayley Snow scents-es something fishy when a customer falls stone-crab cold dead on a seafood tasting tour. Thanksgiving is nearly here, and Key West food critic Hayley Snow has just one more assignment to put to bed for Key Zest magazine before she gets to celebrate with her family and her police officer fiancé, Nathan Bransford. Then, just days later, wedding bells will ring-if death doesn't toll first. The sweet potatoes and stuffing will have to wait when Hayley picks up a distraught phone call from her friend Analise Smith. On the last stop of a seafood tasting tour run by Analise, one of the customers collapsed-dead. With the police on the verge of shutting down the tour-and ruining Analise's business-Hayley can hardly refuse her friend's entreaties to investigate. As if wedding jitters and family strife weren't enough for Hayley to worry about, there's crusty pastry chef Martha Hubbard, whose key lime pie may have been the murder weapon-but did she poison her own pie or was she framed? As the hours to Turkey Day tick away, the pressure cooker is on for Hayley to serve up the culprit on a silver platter.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, the year-round population of Key West, Florida, faces a tsunami of tourists and snowbirds. It doesn't help that outrageously wealthy key-lime-pie aficionado David Sloan has persuaded the city to host his pie-baking contest. Every pie purveyor on the island is out to win the coveted Key Lime Key to the City, and Key Zest food-critic Hayley Snow is on the scene to report it. Meanwhile, Hayley's home life is turning more tart than sweet. Hayley's new hubby, police-detective Nathan Bransford, announces that her intimidating mother-in-law is bearing down on the island for a surprise visit. Hayley offers to escort Nathan's crusty mom on the iconic Conch Train Tour of the island's holiday lights, but it becomes a recipe for disaster when they find a corpse among the glittering palm trees and fantastic flamingos. The victim-Au Citron Vert's controversial new pastry chef-was a frontrunner in Sloan's contest. It's bad enough that Hayley's too-curious mother-in-law is cooking up trouble. Now, the murderer is out to take a slice out of Hayley. Can she handle the heat of a killer's kitchen?

Key Zest food critic Hayley Snow and her groom, police detective Nathan Bransford, chose Scotland for their long-delayed honeymoon, hoping to sightsee and enjoy some prize-winning scones. But their romantic duo swells to a crowd when they're joined by Nathan's family as well as octogenarian Miss Gloria. Nathan's sister Vera takes the women on a whirlwind tour of some of Scotland's iconic mystic places as research for a looming book project. But the trip takes a deadly tartan turn when a dinner party guest falls ill and claims she was poisoned. And then the group watches in horror as a mysterious tourist tumbles to his death from the famous Falkirk Wheel, high above the Forth & Clyde canal. Vera and her friends deny knowing the dead man, but after observing their reactions to the fall, Hayley is not convinced. With one person dead, a second possibly poisoned, and the tension among Vera's friends as thick as farmhouse cheese, Hayley fears her long-awaited honeymoon might end with another murder. Far away from home and surrounded by unfamiliar faces, eccentric characters, and a forbiddingly gorgeous setting, Hayley must call on all her savvy to keep a killer from striking again and then escaping Scot free.

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, a food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan's dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking and finds him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man's body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules, so it's no wonder he had a few enemies. When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley's mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG's memorial service reception at the local Woman's Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook, and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners. But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present, with murderous results.

Food critic Hayley Snow and her pal Miss Gloria are overjoyed to welcome Violet and Bettina Booth, aka the Scottish Scone Sisters, to Key West. The sisters will host “The UK Bakes!-Key West Edition.” But the same day they arrive, the bed-and-breakfast the sisters are staying in gets torched. The contest begins the next morning featuring three local bakers. One is the inn owner's wife, Rayna, who is not only the most talented chef of the group but now a person of interest in the fire. The next night, a dogwalker discovers a body near the bed-and-breakfast. The victim appears to be Rayna's husband, and the murder weapon points directly to the Scottish Scone Sisters. But the show must go on. In between filming sessions, the three elderly ladies and Hayley must search for clues to the brutal murder in order to find out who wants to force them out of the kitchen. But as they draw closer to the answer, the threats from a murderer grow closer too. Are they now in danger of getting baked off?

The heat is turned up for Hayley Snow and her friends in the next installment of the Key West Food Critic mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Lucy Burdette. Writer Catherine Davitt has returned to the Keys to research a book about Hemingway's wives, but she's also on the hunt for the truth about her missing friend. Hayley quickly agrees to help investigate and they hit the road to see what clues they might find. Back in the late 1970s, Catherine and her friend Veronica were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves of Big Pine Key, until Veronica vanished, and the sheriff's office cleared out the camp. Catherine and Hayley begin interviewing Big Pine Key residents who were around at the time of Veronica's disappearance but uncover more questions than answers. Catherine and Hayley stop to speak with a motel owner who frequented the fringes of the commune, but they find him stabbed to death. Then Catherine also goes missing, and signs point to a connection between the old case and the new murder. It's up to Hayley to unravel the knot of secrets and lies before time runs out.

This collection includes books 4-6 of Lucy Burdette's cozy “Key West Food Critic Mystery” series. “Murder With Ganache” Food critic Hayley Snow has her plate heaped high with restaurant reviews, tastings, an article on the Hemingway cats, her best friend's wedding, and murder... “Death With All the Trimmings” The only snow in Key West this Christmas is Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, who is not getting time off for the holiday...or time off from murder. “Fatal Reservations” Hayley Snow's beat is reviewing restaurants for Key Zest magazine, but she sets aside her knife and fork when a dear friend is accused of murder...

This box set includes the first three books in Lucy Burdette's cozy culinary “Key West Food Critic Mystery” series. “An Appetite for Murder” Food critic Hayley Snow must find out who used meringue to murder before she takes the blame for the death of the woman she caught in bed with her boyfriend. “Death in Four Courses” While attending the annual Key West literary conference, Hayley Snow stumbles upon the body of another restaurant critic and gets caught up in the murder investigation. “Topped Chef” Hayley Snow loves her job as a food critic in Key West. She'd rate her life four stars, until she's forced into the spotlight... and another murder investigation.