In this all-new culinary cozy mystery series, reporter turned Tex-Mex waitress Josie Callahan is about to go from serving queso to solving cases… and uncle’s Tex-Mex restaurant—isn’t exactly living the dream, but it is a fresh start.
And business is booming as tourists pour into Broken Boot for its famous Wild West Festival. But when a local jewelry designer is found strangled outside Milagro after a tamale-making party, Josie’s reporter instincts kick in. As suspects pile up and alibis crack faster than taco shells, Josie needs to wrap up this case tighter than her tía’s tortillas—before another victim calls for the check…
INCLUDES TEX-MEX RECIPES!
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On my quest to catch up on any book series I’ve enjoyed in the past, today I began reading the ‘A Taste of Texas Mystery’ series by Rebecca Adler. I’d won an ARC of the third book in the series last year and wrote a review upon completion. I liked the series and started from the beginning this week with Here Today, Gone Tamale.
Josie, a late 20s young woman in Texas, is not Latina. Her mother’s sister married someone of Latino descent. They run a TexMex restaurant with the husband’s mother, known as Abuelita. While she’s not really Josie’s grandmother, something must have happened with Josie’s parents in the past (we don’t know yet) for her to feel like the aunt and uncle are her closest family. After a failed engagement and termination from her job as a reporter at a paper in a bigger city, Josie returns home to wait tables at her family’s restaurant and find a part-time job on the local paper. The restaurant is hosting a charity tamale event where one of the townspeople, Dixie, is found dead out back by the dumpster. Was it the mayor or his wife who argued with Dixie? A former friend or her daughters who are selling Dixie’s jewelry? A waiter who didn’t like that Dixie tried to kiss him? A nephew looking for an inheritance? Or someone in Josie’s family with a past secret?
Adler delivers a fun mystery in a unique setting for me. I like the TexMex backdrop and the non-traditional (for a cozy) environment and ethnicity of the supporting cast. There’s a layer of flavor and culture which is endearing and comforting. The mystery has a few red herrings and some good clues, and we worry about Josie — she’s flirting with her ex-bf who is now dating the town beauty queen winner, and her dog has been kidnapped when Josie starts investigating the murder. I felt the same about this debut as I did the third book in the series: it’s good and has potential, but it was missing a little something to stand out quite yet for me. I’ll still keep reading the series as I like it, but I hope the setting is more connective and clear in the future. All the characters are interesting and good, but I’m not attached to anyone yet. It might be the kind of series where you fall into it after 3 or 4 books. I’ll order the second one next month and see if I’m fully baked in like the tamales are in this edition!
Josie Callahan is back working at her family’s Tex Mex restaurant while she figures out what is next in her life. She’s just in time for the Wild Wild West Festival that brings in the tourists to the small town of Broken Boot. But the tamale making party at the restaurant ends in tragedy when a local artist is found murdered behind the restaurant. Who would want to kill her?
It took me a little while to fully get into this book. There were a bunch of characters early on, and I struggled to keep them all straight. Likewise, the mystery got off to a slow start. But as I kept reading, I grew to like the characters and really got into the story. The ending was surprising and suspenseful. I can easily see this growing into a charming series.