The Grilling Season by Diane Mott Davidson

As always, nothing too deep here, but good fun. And, of course, lots of food - cooking and eating. Her recipes are way out of my depth, but they always sound so delicious! I am extremely reluctant to attempt a recipe with more than four or five ingredients, but I love the descriptions of the ingredients and the process and the final product. The mysteries aren't half bad either.

This time Goldy's abusive ex is the prime suspect in the murder of his current girlfriend (or one of them). Naturally, Goldy is the one to discover the body, and, also naturally, Arch want her to investigate and exonerate the jerk.

The background catering events are a Stanley Cup celebration (several months after the fact) at which many/most of the concerned parties are present - and at which Goldy is run down by one of the party attendees in the course of a hockey game (with players on rollerblades, since even in Colorado there is not much ice in August) - and a doll collectors convention - a specialized convention for collectors of a fashion doll resembling in all particulars the ever popular Barbie (in this setting called "Babsie"). There is something fundamentally perverse about collecting toys, not playing with them. Beyond Barbie, witness all those "action" figures for every movie targeting teens and younger. Most of them are carefully preserved in their original packaging by adults - Star Wars comes to mind.

I try not to accuse the writers of series mysteries of deep societal motivations and the use of symbolism. At one point, we were using a couple of mystery stories by a popular regional writer as our teaching novels. One day after discussing the cross-cultural symbolism in one of the books with my class, I realized that I had been teaching it too long. I was starting to see things that just weren't there. That said, I think that Davidson enjoys making fun of some of our sillier habits.