Death on a silver platter (A culinary mystery)

All is not placid in the life of Sophie Greenway, Minnesota restaurant reviewer and owner of the Maxfield Plaza. A pipe has burst in the hotel storage area and is flooding the room, her parents are returning from their world travels and plan to move into the Maxfield, and her adult stepdaughter is boomeranging back home. To top all of this off, Sophie also has to review the new restaurant Café Sophia, which just happens to be named after her by its owner, her ex-boyfriend and the man with whom she recently had a very brief affair. Into the fray comes her best friend Elaine Veeland, whose family troubles provide a somewhat welcome distraction. Veelund Industries is in the midst of a power struggle amongst Elaine's brothers and mother and the strife threatens to erupt in violence. When Elaine's troubled daughter attempts suicide and then disappears, it triggers events that will uncover family secrets and end in tragedy.What makes this series so successful is Ellen Hart's talent for creating secondary characters that are as fully developed and fascinating as her main ones. The Veelund family is both tragic and sympathetic, and the reader can't help but want to learn more about them. Sophie herself is a wonderfully engaging heroine who is flawed but always acts with the best of intentions. Torn between her love for her husband Bram and her ex Nathan, Sophie must come to terms with her feelings and make a pivotal decision in her life. The reader can also easily relate with Sophie's struggle to keep her mouth shut as she watches her stepdaughter easily wrap Bram around her finger and take advantage of his generosity. While I thought I had the killer pegged, Hart managed to completely mislead me and concluded up the mystery with a doozy of a twist. There's less of a focus on food than many foodies may wish, but this is a wonderfully witty and engaging mystery that keeps the reader riveted and continues the excellence of the Culinary Mystery series.

Sophie Greenway, the owner of the Maxfield Plaza historic hotel in St. Paul and restaurant reviewer for the Minneapolis Times is a close friend with Elaine Veelund, the CEO of Veelund Log Lodges. Elaine is going threw a difficult time right now worrying about her daughter Tracy who is sliding deeper and deeper into a depression. When Tracy attempts suicide Elaine takes her daughter to the house of her mother Millie to recuperate and be watched.Millie abruptly announces she is selling Veelund Industries to the dismay of Alex (the president and CEO of the company), his lover Roman Marchand (the president of Veelund's KitchenVisions) and Elaine. Danny, the youngest son, is there on a visit that is personal in nature and couldn't care less about the business. When Millie dies in her sleep everyone thinks it is of natural causes until the autopsy proves she was murdered. Millie was a rigid, bigoted redneck who made many enemies but when another Veelund is also murdered Sophie finds herself in danger of becoming victim number three.Ellen Hart can always be counted on to write a good mystery but DEATH ON A SILVER PLATTER goes one step further. This enthralling story is a heart wrenching relationship drama concerning the social dynamics of the Veelund family. It would be great if the author created another mystery series starring Elaine Veelund, a complex and strong heroine who has no problems giving justice a nudge. Although Sophie is an integral part of the story, her role is not that of an amateur sleuth but that of a wife and friend. This is a one sitting reading experiences.Harriet Klausner

Once again Sophie's old friends are dropping like flies. Many years before Carl Veelund had died not long after he built the grand mansion, Prairie Lodge. His wife Millie still lives there. She runs the family business along with their oldest Alex and their daughter Elaine. Their son Danny lives in Minneapolis and is a writer. He comes out for the family board meetings.Sophie, restaurant reviewer, and her husband Bram, radio persanlity, own the Maxfield Plaza and live in an apartment in the hotel. Her parents sold it to them for $1 when they retired. Now her parents are on a world tour. Bram's daughter, Margie, comes back to Minneapolis and Bram sets her up in an apartment at the Maxfield. At first Sophie is fine with this until Margie begins getting under her skin.Sophie goes to visit Elaine to discuss the log houses her family's company builds. They have several models on the Veelund property. Sophie's dad wants to build one on Pokegama Lake when they return. Bram talks Sophie into taking Margie with her. Turns out Margie knows Tracy's new boyfriend Mick.One night Tracy goes missing and Millie dies. What is going on with this family? They are all full of secrets and more are to come.Sophie discovers an old diary of her mother's. It puts her into the center of the tragedies of the Veelund family. Could one of these people be a murderer?Sophie always finds herself in interesting circumstances. Many of her old friends have secrets and end up dying. I'd hate to be one of her old friends. But the characters are fully developed and the settings are great. Who knew Minnesota was such a great setting for mysteries?I always enjoy getting to know all the characters in her books. They are fully described, and I don't have trouble keeping them straight. She puts lots of twists and turns and many secrets in her books. It makes it almost impossible to figure out the killer ahead of time.I highly recommend this book and that you read this whole series. I find once I start one, I can't put it down.

Amateur sleuth Sophie Greenway more than has her hands full running the Maxfield Plaza Hotel, critiquing Twin Cities restaurants for the Minneapolis Times Register while still trying to enjoy some semblance of a happy home life with her husband Bram. Unfortunately, she's also a soft touch for a friend in trouble, so when a working dinner with gal pal Elaine Veeland is abruptly cut short by Elaine's daughter Tracy's attempted suicide, Sophie suddenly finds herself precipitated full-tilt into the barbed-wire animosities of the dysfunctional Vreeland family and up to her neck in the most emotionally-fraught murder investigation of her career. Carl Vreeland made a fortune in the construction business...a fortune which he did not live long enough to enjoy, but which he passed intact to his bigoted wife Millie and their three troubled children: Alex, Elaine and Danny. Millie ran the company until the youngsters...all but Danny who chose a different path...were old enough to take control of its various operations, but now the firm is floundering, and the adults are at each other's throats over what to do about resolving the situation. Then Millie dies. Accident or murder? While the police are still investigating, deeply-disturbed/rebellious Tracy disappears and is later found strangled in Bram's daughter Margie's apartment. Her subsequent death fuels Sophie's search for a double killer, and, as is frequently the case with Ms. Hart's superbly-crafted puzzlers, the solution to all of these present evils lies buried in the dreadful past, a past which, by a quirk of fate, actually links Sophie directly to the Vreelands and adds impetus to her quest for the truth. When she peels away the shadows, what she finds hidden there almost gets her killed.Ellen Hart is one of my very favorite mystery writers. While I honestly believe that she couldn't write a bad book if you put her in handcuffs, I also think that "Death on a Silver Platter" is her most compelling and psychologically-complex Culinary Mystery to date. Its intricate plot moves like a house-a-fire; the style is absolutely gripping, and although Sophie is always at the heart of the action, Ms. Hart has developed her entire cast of characters in far greater depth than is generally true of genre fiction, so it's almost impossible not to become genuinely involved in their lives. Although I would never apply the term 'cozy' to Ms. Hart's novels, there's also just enough of her trademark wry humor here to keep the darker aspects of her plotline lightly leavened. Oh...and forget about trying to out-guess the denouement; it rings utterly true to the life premises of the Vreeland menage, but it brought a surprised YES! from me when I reached it. The silver platter here is actually solid gold reading, and like the novel itself, that taste-tempting recipe we've come to expect by way of lagniappe is a keeper!