Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron

Bayou Book Thief
by Ellen Byron

ISBN-13: 9780593437612
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Released: June 7th 2022

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki's teen mother disappeared from the hospital.

Ricki's dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve "Vee" Charbonnet, the city's legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation - collecting vintage cookbooks - into a vocation by launching the museum's gift shop, Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief. The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations.


My Review:
Bayou Book Thief is a cozy mystery. Ricki stumbled across a lot of crime, not all of it related to the murder. Since her last boss had been (unknown to her) pulling off a scam, she's more aware of the possibility now. She's a friendly, easy-to-talk-to sort of gal, and she's good at tracking a clue down to its source. The detective was overworked so didn't mind the tips. But she told Ricki to run the scenarios that her vivid imagination came up with through a logic test to see if her ideas were really reasonable before reporting them to the police. This was a clue-based puzzle mystery. As there were several crimes, I'll just say that some whodunits were more obvious while others needed a longer accumulation of clues to guess.

There was no sex. There were only a couple of uses of bad language. 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.