A Sheetcake Named Desire: A Piece of Cake Mystery

By Jacklyn Brady

Paperback, 296 pages, $7.99

This sweet treat is the first in a new series by Jacklyn Brady that will make you want to head to the pantry and find ingredients for cake baking.

Rita Lucero, a cake artist, has decided her soon-to-be ex-husband has dragged his feet on their divorce long enough, so she heads to Zydeco Cakes in New Orleans to use the element of surprise to confront him face-to-face to sign the papers.

“It was the same pending divorce that had left me chopping onions by the bushel that had brought me to the Crescent City for a few days. But now, instead of getting my ex’s signature on our divorce settlement, I was standing in his bakery, shaking the dust off my cake decorating skills.”

And, it’s made even worse when she finds her husband, Phillippe Renier, dead near his antebellum mansion near the Garden District, where he’s located his cake decorating business. That’s after she discovers that he’s set up shop with several of their mutual college friends.

In a “community that whispered wealth at every turn,” Rita felt out of place, but when she’s asked to help Miss Frankie, her mother-in-law, with funeral arrangements, find the killer and run her late husband’s business, she’s got her hands full of more than fondant and pastry-decorating bags.

“Yesterday, I’d been an almost-divorced woman with no social life. Today, I was a rich widow with no social life. Huge difference.”

Toss in a jealous girlfriend — who thought she and Phillippe were on their way down the aisle —  and resentful and distrusting old friends, who have been a part of the cake business since the start. Rita’s mixing up more than just cake batter. She’s dealing with a recipe for more than sour cream cake.

And, after the hot and humid summer we’ve had, readers can also appreciate Rita’s feelings about the horrible July humidity in New Orleans. The New Mexico native is used to heat, but the New Orleans weather was “weighing her down even as it made her curls frizz up.”

Quite frankly, it’s oppressive — “The heaviness of oxygen at sea level landed on my altitude-loving chest like a 50-pound bag of flour.”

With as many possible suspects as there are colors for cake decorations, this is a delightful beginning for a new series. I look forward to see the direction subsequent titles will take.

Let the baking begin.

Lisa Allmendinger is a regional reporter for AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com. In addition, each Wednesday she reviews a cozy mystery in her column called “Cozy Corner.”