Amy Ridley enjoys entering cooking competitions and the informal Fast Food Feud competition offers an enticing prize- custom-designed artwork for her blog. Little does Amy expect that one of the contestants will wind up dead, never mind murdered! Amy is determined to help find the murderer so homicide detective, Bruce Shepler, can focus more on his wife and upcoming baby. Bruce is the husband of Amy's best friend, Carla, and Amy is busy juggling meals and helping sate Carla's food cravings. Unfortunately, Bruce seems nowhere near to finding the killer, and it's up to Amy to uncover the identity of the murderer!

FUDGE BROWNIES & MURDER is the fourth book in the Culinary Competition series. While I thoroughly enjoyed FUDGE BROWNIES & MURDER, I suspect readers more familiar with the series will appreciate the nuances of the story far more than I did. Janel Gradowski provides readers with all the details needed to jump right into the series, but the relationships, which have built over the course of the series, are undergoing some changes (such as the pregnancy) that will be better enjoyed if a reader has been following the series. However, this is an oversight I intend to correct because the first three books of the Culinary Competition series are now on my to-be-read list!

Amy and her best friend, Carla, are a lot of fun! Janel Gradowski does a great job at showing us their fears and concerns about parenting. I love Carla's food cravings and how Amy creatively addresses them. However, it is the secondary characters in FUDGE BROWNIES & MURDER who kept me in stitches from laughing so hard. I absolutely love Amy's reaction to the two sisters and their over-the-top appearances! And oh, the recipes mentioned in FUDGE BROWNIES & MURDER sound absolutely scrumptious! You just can't go wrong with brownies!

Janel Gradowski creates a deliciously enticing environment in FUDGE BROWNIES & MURDER, as I want to browse the Clement Street Market and sample the various wares. We get a tiny taste of what the gourmet food and craft marketplace has to offer and I'm eager to read the earlier books in the series to discover more about the Clement Street Market. FUDGE BROWNIES & MURDER has definitely whetted my appetite, both for brownies and more of this fun series!

Book Summary

From bestselling mystery author Janel Gradowski comes another deliciously deadly mystery...

Culinary whiz and reluctant amateur sleuth, Amy Ridley, has a lot on her plate. Her very pregnant best friend, Carla, can barely move from her couch per doctor's orders. So Amy is tasked with preparing meals for the expanding family along with baking endless pans of brownies to quench Carla's pregnancy cravings. Not only is she playing chef, but she's also trying to convince the mommy-to-be that she needs to have a baby shower. But when a restaurant owner is murdered at a blogging conference, Amy finds herself in a race to catch the killer before the baby is born.

As Carla's baby bump gets bigger, so does the list of suspects. While Amy pares down the potential murderers and staves off disgruntled cooking competition rivals, the clock ticks down, the baby's arrival draws closer, and the danger grows stronger! If Amy doesn't watch her back, she may be the next member of the competition going down.

Read an Excerpt