Hot Dish Heaven Mystery

Cub reporter Emerald Malloy is assigned to gather "church food" recipes from the owner of Hot Dish Heaven, a café in a small town in the Red River Valley. Upon her arrival, she learns of a local, unsolved murder. Confident that solving the case will catapult her from newspaper "gopher" to investigative reporter, she questions the locals while attending a benefit dinner-dance at the VFW. By the end of the night, she's consumed lots of hot dish and bars while talking to everyone from the Irish, Catholic priest who lives among these Scandinavian, Lutheran farmers to the café owner's eccentric aunts. She's also met a hunky deputy sheriff and learned some tough lessons about herself. But the question remains, "Will she live long enough for any of it to matter?"

Reporter Emerald Malloy returns to Minnesota's Red River Valley to gather more recipes for an encore feature the Minneapolis newspaper plans to run on rural cooking. This time around, Margie Johnson, the owner of Hot Dish Heaven, the local cafe, surprises her with unusual recipes, including Sauerkraut Hot Dish, explaining that man cannot live on Tuna Noodle Hot Dish alone. While intrigued by Margie's efforts to expand her "culinary horizons," Emerald has no interest in looking into the murder of a farmhand whose body is found at a local sugar beet piler. Instead, her plans focus on getting more "intimately" acquainted with Randy Ryden, the deputy she met when last in town. Those plans change, however, when someone close to Margie is arrested for the crime, and Emerald and friends must investigate their way through a blizzard, a fish fry, and a whole lot more to discover the real killer.

Reporter Emerald Malloy is back at the Hot Dish Heaven Café. This time she's in Kennedy, a small Scandinavian farm community in Minnesota's Red River Valley, for a wedding, although the festivities are quickly muddled by a murder. While vacillating between steering clear of police business and finding the killer before an innocent person is charged with the crime, Emerald and her zany friends end up at a colorful tavern, a high school hockey tournament, and a wedding dance at the local VFW. Along the way, they also learn the homicide may be linked to a fraud scheme quite possibly involving a number of townspeople. Of course this only complicates matters, leaving Emerald little time for anything beyond the investigation, including her fledgling love life. Love, however, is the last thing on Emerald's mind when she and her dog find themselves in grave peril and at the mercy of a killer. Will they survive? Uff-da, you'll just have to read the story and find out. And, as always, check out the old-time hot dish, Jell-O, and bar recipes at the back of the book.