Of Mushrooms and Matrimony is the sixth book in the Tish Tarragon cozy mystery series by Amy Patricia Meade, featuring a literary caterer.
Title: Of Mushrooms and Matrimony
Author: Amy Patricia Meade
Series: Tish Tarragon #6
First Published: January 3, 2023
Publisher: Severn House
Genres: Mystery
Acquired: from the publisher via Netgalley
*** Thank you to the publisher, Severn House, for providing me with an e-copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review. ***
Literary caterer and owner of Cookin’ the Books cafe Tish Tarragon is pushing thoughts of her impending eviction aside to prepare an appetising welcome buffet for a wedding weekend at Abbingdon Green Bed and Breakfast. While there, Tish witnesses one of the guests, controversial TV chef and restaurant critic, Gunner Randall, threatening staff after missing breakfast and making do with a mushroom omelet.
When Randall is found dead the following day, it soon becomes clear that poisoned mushrooms were behind his demise. With no shortage of potential suspects and motives, can Tish and her new beau, Sheriff Clemson Reade, uncover who was enraged enough with the unsavoury star to silence him for good?
Another wonderful addition to this cozy mystery series
As a big fan of the Tish Tarragon mysteries, I’m always excited whenever there’s a new book in the series and this one was so much fun to read. Even though this is already book six in the series, it doesn’t feel like it – the stories still feel pretty new and fresh each time and I feel that there’s still a lot of learn about each character.
Some of my favourite aspects of this series continue to be highlights for me, including the fact that Tish is a literary caterer. The dishes (and punny names) described always make me wish that Tish’s cafe was a real place. There are recipes included so one day I will definitely have to give some of them a try.
Another unique aspect (albeit a recent development) is that Tish is a hired consultant to the police, which means that there’s no real friction between her and law enforcement officials (which basically removes my pet peeve of grumpy and antagonistic police characters in a mystery LOL).
Some of the best characters
Obviously one of the things that can keep a long-running series still interesting is the characters. I think it helps that the Tish Tarragon stories have enough sidekicks that the books will often focus on one or two of them, develop more to their backstory and character development, and then in the next book, it will be someone else’s turn.
In Of Mushrooms and Matrimony, I was super happy to see that most of character focus (aside from Tish, the murderer, and the suspects) was on Jules and Sherriff Reade, my two favourite characters in the books.
As for the murder mystery itself, there were a lot of twists and turns, quite a bit of running around, and lots of different suspects to consider and interview. There was a lot of lying and misdirection, so sometimes it felt like Tish and Reade were going around in circles and asking the same questions, but the mystery unravelled slowly and each layer added more clues and hints until the killer was revealed.
As the title reveals, there’s a lot of mushrooms in this book. And I’m not kidding. Mushrooms and mushroom recipes of every kind. I LOVE mushrooms and was pretty much ready to eat a 7-course mushroom meal once I finished reading this book!
All in all, it was a really fun book and one I didn’t want to put down once I started it. While this could easily be read as a standalone, I highly recommend checking out the rest of the books in this series first.
Quote from Of Mushrooms and Matrimony
Loved everything about it but the characters are the best part. Reade and Jules are my faves too, I think. So many great ones.
Yesss! I have been loving the character development of the supporting cast in this series since the beginning.