Leslie Budewitz: Between a Wok and a Dead Place
Spice Shop #7
As I hadn’t read this series before, it took me a minute to navigate both characters and setting, but once I did, I was all in. Set in Pepper Reece’s spice shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, the setting in this book was a character all on its own. This book focuses on the “CID” (I had to look that up), or Chinatown International District during Lunar New Year celebrations, and Pepper is enjoying them with her buddy Seetha. She runs into an acquaintance (connected to her present boyfriend in a labyrinthine manner), Roxanne, who is coming out of a building looking completely freaked out. She’s found a dead body.