Drop Dead Delicious (A Maggie and Odessa Mystery)

Best friends since high school, Maggie Swift and Odessa Wilkes are working hard at their new careers, Maggie as a P.I. in-training and Odessa as a dessert chef. A pixie redhead, with more curiosity than common sense, Maggie wants to do more than the dishes and coaching her son’s soccer team. Once, Odessa wanted to be as rich as Oprah, now she dreams of winning first place on a televised Bake Off, if she can just find a killer cake recipe.

As a mother and wife, Maggie’s knack for finding things and people motivates her to try her hand at sleuthing. Armed with a certificate from her Adult Education Class, Private Investigation for Idiots, and a job working for a retired New York City police detective’s failing P.I. business, she wants to give it a go. Despite, protests from her husband, a hyperactive eight year old son and an inscrutable family dog. In between PTA meetings and doing the laundry, Maggie thinks she could be the next Sam Spade,

For Odessa, after a tumultuous year, finally she is back on track, with her growing cake making business. Despite having to work with her demanding sister, Candace at their family restaurant The Blue Moon, things are looking good. Until her embezzling ex-boss comes back to town.

Burke Peterson was a nightmare Odessa would sooner forget, but he won’t let her. His return to New York City brings back really bad memories. Especially the one where Odessa gets tossed out of her high paying job, dumped by her ‘perfect’ boyfriend on a crowded Manhattan street and stuck in a subway fire all on the same day. The incident left her with an anxiety disorder and little blue pills to manage it.

With Peterson’s return, Odessa has to contend with her overwhelming desire to kill him with a poison pie, dealing with her new boyfriend’s sudden jealousy and finding the recipe for the perfect cake! While Maggie tries to help her best friend, she has problems of her own. Her first stake out brings her too close for comfort to a deranged oversexed mistress and her accident prone husband’s penchant for power tools.

Despite all their efforts, Peterson drags Odessa and Maggie reluctantly into dirty money, hidden codes, the FBI, Las Vegas and murder.