Six Feet Deep Dish by Mindy Quigley

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Chef Delilah O’Leary is seeing her dream come true.  She’s opening her own specialty pizzeria in Geneva Bay, Wisconsin with the help of her fiancé, Sam, who invented an app that made him a fortune: a very, very large fortune.  Far from being the driven type A executive type, Sam is a laid back guy who doesn’t get upset about, well, anything.  Delilah, on the other hand, is driven, with a tendency to micromanage and organize up one side and down the other. Sometimes it’s hard to see how they make it as a couple, but she likes to think they complement each other: she tries to speed him up, and he slows her down.

This time, however, Sam has let his laissez-faire style go too far:  the custom-made sign for the new pizzeria proclaims it is Sam and Delilah’s Deep Dutch Pizza. 

Now all Delilah has to do is figure out what the heck “Deep Dutch” pizza is before the place opens in, oh, an hour.  Unhappy words are exchanged, and Sam does what he usually does—flees.

He leaves behind his cat, chubby orange Butterball, though Delilah has begun to think of the tubby tabby as her own.  Still, she has a business to run and people to feed, so Delilah sets out serving pizza and greeting guests, including her elderly Aunt Biz and the aunt’s caregiver. Things seem to be going well, despite a server who keeps going missing, and Delilah is just beginning to breathe when she hears a voice call her name.

It's Aunt Biz, and her caregiver is now very dead from a bullet fired from Aunt Biz’s gun.

I had heard good things about this one and it mostly met expectations.  I, of course, was very interested in Butterball, and he is an important character in the book, and not just cover eye-candy.  I liked the setting; Geneva Bay is described as a resort town with ties to famous gangsters, such as Al Capone, John Dillinger, and Baby Face Nelson. Who knew Wisconsin was such a hotbed of criminal activity? Not me, obviously.

As for the characters, I wasn’t sold at first on Delilah because she is such a control freak. I am a fan of character growth, though, and she gradually begins to realize that she needs to loosen up a little.  It’s going to be hard, but self-awareness is a start, and I like watching characters learn and change so I have hopes for this one.

The supporting characters are good and reasonably well developed, and the plot was interesting. It was topical and plausible. Delilah’s determination to prove her aunt’s innocence is classic cozy, and the touch of romance was nice. Also there’s Butterball—even though he’s being put on a diet (as he should be).

I’ll definitely be on the lookout for the next in the series which should be Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust, due out April 25, 2023.