By Jerrilyn Farmer
William Morrow
Hardcover

Character Madeline Bean reunites with readers in her fifth culinary mystery cleverly titled, Mumbo Gumbo. This time around, Maddie and her party-planning assistants from "Mad Bean Events" have hit their slow season and money is getting tight.

Mumbo Gumbo Excerpt So I sat there, watching, as Tim Stock left his house for the last time. The poor guy. It was unlikely this fire was going to turn out to be a simple accident, not with all the mysterious troubles over the past week. Things always connect. When a guy hides out and then winds up dead, it adds up to trouble. What sort of trouble had Stock been involved in? Was there something going on at Food Freak that could get a recipe writer killed? Or was it something else, some personal problem that had become fatal? ©2003 Jerrilyn Farmer Published with permission from William Morrow

In an attempt to replenish her pockets, Maddie takes a job offered to her by her most recent client, Greta Greene, the producer of the extremely popular new reality game show "Food Freak."

Maddie has stepped into the position, and the office, of the mysteriously missing head writer. When things begin to happen around the studio involving ransacked offices, hidden rooms and a lump on the back of Maddie's own head delivered by an unknown perpetrator, she decides to do some research that doesn't involve recipes and game show questions.

Where is the missing head writer? Is he dead? Is there some correlation between his disappearance and the strange happenings at the studio?

And what is going on with all the horribly disproportioned recipe ingredients if the writer was such a pro? Follow Maddie on her trek through the world of a reality game show and find out!

Bookworm's Briefing
Jerrilyn Farmer knows life behind the scenes of television writing since her own resume includes such work and she has definitely brought that knowledge into play in Mumbo Gumbo. Unfortunately, rather than cooking in the same kitchen as popular culinary mystery writer Diane Mott Davidson, her experience in this area has taken precedence over Madeline Bean's mystery. The story of the missing writer is almost put on the back burner as Jerrilyn Farmer delves into the inner workings of making a television program and sprinkles it with studio history in guide-like fashion.

Although there is minimal suspense and the characters are one-dimensional with no real development or reader-identification, the book isn't totally inconsumable. There are some cute moments, and justice does win out in the end, albeit through an unlikely - and slightly far-fetched - source.