Toast Mortem

Toast Mortem is one of the later Hemlock Falls Inn novels in Claudia Bishop's long upstate New York cozy series. The Quilliam sisters Sarah and Meg are running their inn through another seasonal crisis (a culinary school opening near their property, a competing restaurant's aggressive marketing, the body of a local food critic in their parking lot) and Bishop handles the formula with the kind of relaxed confidence the form rewards.

The cooking material is the pleasure. Bishop has been writing the culinary-cozy form for a decade and a half by this point and has the rhythms down. The supporting cast (Doreen the cook, the inn's various regular guests, the Hemlock Falls community) get their cameo appearances.

Three stars. Reliable late-series cozy. Best for series readers; new readers should start with A Taste for Murder or one of the earlier entries.