Rubbed Out by Riley Adams

Rubbed Out by Riley Adams ISBN-13: 9780425259993 Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: July 2, 2013

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
Even Lulu Taylor—proprietress of Aunt Pat’s Barbeque Restaurant in the heart of Memphis, Tennessee—needs to get out of the kitchen now and then. But at the Rock and Ribs festival, she finds more than a taste of trouble…

Reuben Shaw rubs a lot of people the wrong way—including Lulu’s best friend, Cherry, who has the misfortune of being in the booth next to his at the festival. The pigheaded pit master thinks he’s a shoo-in to win the barbeque competition, but he spends more time stirring up trouble than seasoning his spare ribs.

Hours after she gets into a quarrel with him, Cherry finds Shaw dead with a butcher knife in his chest. Now it’s her turn to get grilled—by the police. Lulu sets out to clear her friend’s name and finds Shaw had more secrets than his BBQ recipe. She’ll need to act fast, because the real killer will spare no one…including Lulu.


My Review:
Rubbed Out is a humorous cozy mystery. It's the fourth in a series, but you can follow this story without having read the first novel, and this novel didn't spoil the mysteries in the previous novels.

The characters were engaging and reacted realistically to the situations. The details about the area, the festival, and the people brought the story alive in my imagination without slowing the pacing. Whodunit was high on my suspect list, but so many people had a motive that whodunit wasn't obvious.

There were no sex scenes. There was a very minor amount of fake bad language (as in, one "heck"). Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable mystery.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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