{"id":5095,"date":"2023-07-10T07:23:51","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5095"},"modified":"2023-07-10T07:23:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:23:51","slug":"leslie-budewitz-between-a-wok-and-a-dead-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/leslie-budewitz-between-a-wok-and-a-dead-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Leslie Budewitz: Between a Wok and a Dead Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spice Shop #7<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As I hadn\u2019t read this series before, it took me a minute to navigate both characters and setting, but once I did, I was all in.\u00a0 Set in Pepper Reece\u2019s spice shop in Seattle\u2019s Pike Place Market, the setting in this book was a character all on its own.\u00a0 This book focuses on the \u201cCID\u201d (I had to look that up), or Chinatown International District during Lunar New Year celebrations, and Pepper is enjoying them with her buddy Seetha.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 She\u2019s found a dead body.<\/p>\n

Roxanne, a curator, has been working in an old hotel, the Gold Rush, helping the owner figure out the value of anything left behind in the long abandoned place, and she\u2019d discovered a complete, antique Chinese pharmacy.\u00a0 Unfortunately, she\u2019s also discovered a body there and Pepper, luckily, is on the spot to help. While Roxanne is upset about damage that might be done to her rare find (as well as flipping out about the blood), Pepper is more concerned with the killing itself as well as hooked on the history involved.<\/p>\n

The police, when they are called in, have little luck figuring out who the man might be, but Pepper is on the case, trying to unravel the community strands that might have brought this man to that particular place.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Pepper has to run her spice shop, where she\u2019s attempting to hire a couple new employees (a frustrating task in this day and age); take care of her dog Arf (she\u2019s lucky enough to take him to work with her); worry about her parents, who are trying to find a house in Seattle\u2019s pricey market; and miss her boyfriend, Nate, who\u2019s in Alaska running his own fishing business.\u00a0 She manages to squeeze in some investigation time, nevertheless.<\/p>\n

The family who owns the old Gold Rush hotel provide puzzles of their own.\u00a0 The evaluation is being undertaken by the son, Oliver (who is dating Pepper\u2019s friend, Seetha), but the parents seem to be the owners.\u00a0 The father, Bobby, who owns a comic book store, appears completely uninterested, and Oliver\u2019s mother, Abigail, while appearing somewhat interested, also seems to be ill and frail.<\/p>\n

Budewitz supplies a very vivid and complete background, including the trouble the merchants in the area have with traffic and parking (as a former retailer, I know this obsession is completely believable), and she paints a good picture of the Lunar New Year celebrations, which include lots of delicious sounding food.\u00a0 The spice shop itself is a great backdrop, and Pepper\u2019s love of herbs and spices as well as detective novels often prompts her to wonder what would her favorite mystery solving monk, Brother Cadfael, do. I love a character whose spirit guide is Brother Cadfael.<\/p>\n

The mystery part of the novel is nicely tricky with a resolution involving decades and decades of built up resentments.\u00a0 Reading through Budewitz\u2019s blog, I was interested in her definition of a cozy, which she says have \u201ctwo parallel investigations\u201d one run by the police, one run by the amateur sleuth.\u00a0 Because the amateur is enmeshed in the community, she (or he) brings something to the table the police do not. She says, \u201cUltimately, these books are about community.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve read a better explication of a cozy, and it\u2019s one I had in mind as I read this thoughtful and well written mystery. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spice Shop #7 As I hadn\u2019t read this series before, it took me a minute to navigate both characters and setting, but once I did, I was all in.\u00a0 Set in Pepper Reece\u2019s spice shop in Seattle\u2019s Pike Place Market, the setting in this book was a character all on its own.\u00a0 This book focuses … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1266,1275,1265,1269,1268,143,1267],"class_list":["post-5095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-between-a-wok-and-a-dead-place","tag-brother-cadfael","tag-leslie-budewitz","tag-pepper-reece","tag-seattle-pike-place-market","tag-seventh-street-books","tag-spice-shop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5095"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5106,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions\/5106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}