Recipe for Death

In her fourth appearance (following Hotel Morgue ), British cookbook columnist Darina Lisle judges a cookery competition at London's Savoy Hotel and becomes involved in a complex murder plot that casts suspicion on a broad array of culinary figures. The family of winner Verity Fry runs an organic meat farm in Somerset. Darina, still smarting from the end of her relationship with her lover William Pigram, accepts an invitation to visit the farm and, in the company of a dashing local restaurant owner and chef, Simon Chapman, meets Fry matriarch Constance, the two Fry daughters and their beaus. Also present is Natasha Quantrell, who was horribly scarred while trying, in vain, to save her cookbook-author cousin in a fire. When Constance Fry is killed in an apparent hit-and-run accident, Darina suspects foul play; soon afterward, another victim dies of food poisoning. While readers may spot the killer, deeper motives are harder to determine. Some of the plot twists seem conventional, such as one woman's hidden identity, but others--e.g., when two unamicable characters are revealed to be estranged spouses--are both plausible and unexpected. (Mar.)