A Catered Mother’s Day: A Mystery with Recipes

With Mother’s Day looming, Ellen Hadley, the disgruntled wife and mother at the center of Crawford’s engaging, dialogue-driven 11th mystery with recipes (after 2014’s A Catered Fourth of July), decides to get back at her ungrateful husband, Bruce, and two negligent sons, Ryan and Ethan, by faking her own kidnapping. A ransom note is supposed to lure Bruce to the Hudson Valley’s rundown Riverview Motel, where Ellen is hiding out, but the discovery of a dead man in her motel room instead brings the police, who suspect Ellen of killing the man. Ryan and Ethan ask their mother’s college roommate, caterer Bernie Simmons, and Bernie’s sister, Libby, for help in exonerating her. A series of murders in Longley, N.Y., leads the sisters, who are amateur sleuths, to believe that Ellen and Ellen’s partner in her dog- biscuit business, Lisa, have secrets that connect them to each victim. Cozy fans will find plenty to like. [em]Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency. (May) [/em]