Stick a Fork In it

In Robin Allen's Stick A Fork in It, the second installment of the Poppy Markham Culinary Cozy Mystery series, this caper has a tasty tell about deception, deceit, and cold-blooded murder. When Poppy Markham's on limited duty as a good inspector from a previous hand injury, she's assigned to do a food inspection a new restaurant called Capital Punishment, things aren't what they seem to be, other than the concept and the decor. Everything went wrong, up until Poppy finds one of the owners of the restaurant, Troy Sharpe, hanging by a noose. While the cops believed it is a suicide, she didn't think so and had done her own investigation for clues. She had a list of suspects to contend with, she dealt with her own issues at home and at work and a love triangle between her boyfriend and her ex-fiance. When she thought she had figured it out, she was cornered by the real killer and discovered why he had done it.


This was a great installment into the series. We do get to know more about Poppy and the world of food inspection. I did care about Poppy and how she didn't get along with her step-mother and step-sister, when she at least tried too. I did like her with Jamie and could fault her with Drew.  I did fell bad for Troy, who ended up getting caught of the middle of a scheme, right when his own building had issues for an inspection, before he was killed. I did like the location in Austin Texas and the compelling setting. This would get you hooked on a good novel, though the only downside is that there haven't been any new books in the series in a few years after the third book.  Great drama, non-stop action, intrigue and suspense all the way through to the end.


Will you stick a fork in it today?