One Poison Pie by Lynn Cahoon

What’s a kitchen witch to do when her almost-fiancé leaves her suddenly single and unemployed? For Mia Malone, the answer’s simple: move to her grandmother’s quirky Idaho hometown, where magic is an open secret and witches and warlocks are (mostly) welcome. With a new gourmet dinner delivery business—and a touch of magic in her recipes—Mia’s hopes are high. Even when her ex-little sister, Christina, arrives looking for a place to stay, Mia takes it in stride.

But her first catering job takes a distasteful turn when her client’s body is found, stabbed and stuffed under the head table. Mia’s shocked to learn that she’s a suspect—and even more so when she realizes she’s next on a killer’s list. With Christina, along with Mia’s meddling grandma, in the mix, she’ll have to find out which of the town’s eccentric residents has an appetite for murder…before this fresh start comes to a sticky end…

 

One Poison Pie (Kitchen Witch Mystery, book one) by Lynn Cahoon

Start date: October 30, 2021

End date: November 5, 2021

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Trigger warning: extortion, sex trafficking

This book was scatterbrained at times. There is a lot jampacked into one novel that, even for the first book in a new series, seemed like too much at once. The plot was kind of a mess, jumping all over the place, and even at the end, I felt I had more unanswered questions than I would have liked.

Before the novel begins, Mia Malone buys an old schoolhouse in her grandmother’s hometown of Magic Springs to give herself a fresh start after her breakup. She left behind her cheating ex-boyfriend, Isaac Adams, and the catering company she helped him build. She intends on turning the new property into a catering business once the building is up to code. Living with her until she can get back on her feet is Christina Adams, Isaac’s younger sister and the screwup of the Adams family. Mia is suspicious of Christina’s presence fearing she may have ulterior motives, but she gives her a position in her catering company anyway.

As it turns out, Christina is being blackmailed by Isaac into giving him the cookbook Mia took with her when she left Isaac’s catering company. The cookbook in question is comprised of recipes Mia had created for the company while she worked for Isaac. I’m not a lawyer but I did a little (read: very little) research about intellectual property rights because I felt like neither Mia nor Isaac had a leg to stand on with ownership of those recipes.

Most recipes, even secret family recipes, are not truly novel, and patent protection, therefore, is rarely available. (King and Warren 59)

Given the limitations of copyright and trade secret law, the best protections for recipes are for the parties to agree who the rightful owner of a recipe is (e.g., the chef or the restaurant) at the time of contracting, with assignments, and if appropriate, nondisclosure agreements (which, practically speaking, are almost a requirement for trade secret protection). (King and Warren 63)

Unless previously established rights were agreed upon, neither party could claim patent rights to the recipes within that cookbook. It isn’t explained if the two had a trade secret agreement, so I assume they didn’t. That would mean that Mia did nothing wrong by taking the recipes she created with her when she left Isaac’s company, and Isaac has no legal right to the recipes she created. That aside, Isaac is committing a felony by extorting Christina. And, frankly, that’s the least of the crimes committed in this novel.

Mia’s grandmother Mary Alice Carpenter, or as Mia calls her, Grans, has lined up Mia’s first paying gig of her new business despite not having a cooking space (cart before the horse much?). Adele Simpson is Grans’s oldest friend, and she’s hired Mia to cater her upcoming birthday party. Unfortunately, Adele ends up dead, stabbed with a knife, the night before her party. Mia is a suspect because Adele’s body is found at the restaurant where Mia and Christina were prepping the food for Adele’s party.

            Officer Mark Baldwin is the cop assigned to the case. He’s suspicious of Mia because she’s an outsider, and he straight-up hates Christina based on their first interaction when she came to town and her gothic appearance. As the story progresses, Christina sheds her gothic attire and Mia attributes this to her growth as an adult.

Her blond hair was braided, and wearing the dress she’d chosen for the event, Christina looked more like Heidi in the Alps than the Goth princess who’d arrived in town less than three months before. Mia liked this version better than the dark one, but she was convinced even this persona was just that, a show. (Cahoon 253)

This phenomenon has appeared in a couple books I’ve read lately, and it rubs me the wrong way. I, along with many people, went through a so-called goth phase as a teenager; however, I didn’t immediately strip myself of my dark attire as I grew up. My taste evolved, but I still carry preferences for gothic things into adulthood. Having a character shed their colorful dyed hair, piercings, and black clothing immediately is unrealistic and lazy characterization/plot development.

Magic Springs is a place where witches live, but very few residents identify themselves as magical to Mia despite her being a witch. Specifically, Mia is a kitchen witch.

“We practice kitchen witchcraft. Mostly healing and throwing spells for happiness and world peace…” (Cahoon 173)

Other witches in town are Grans, Adele (who is supposedly the most powerful witch in Magic Springs), various unnamed witches who are part of the town’s coven, and the Majors family. Trevor Majors is the (reluctant) love interest of the novel. He owns the only grocery store in town. Though he isn’t a practicing witch, he has inherent magic that Mia immediately feels upon meeting him, and she has no interest in dating him despite his pursuit of her. One Poison Pie is a cozy mystery, meaning I didn’t expect much in the way of a romantic subplot, but the romance between Mia and Trevor felt too convenient. Trevor is quick to be protective of Mia even though they’re strangers. You could make a convincing argument that Grans has lived in Magic Springs a long time and so has the Majors family so possibly Trevor trusts Mia because he’s known her grandmother his entire life. Mia seems to be fighting her attraction to Trevor because she doesn’t want a relationship at this point in her life, but she gives up on that when they end up snowed in together briefly at one point in the novel. I wish there had been more development to their relationship.

Another romance that felt rushed was between Christina and Levi Majors, Trevor’s brother. Christina has been in town less time than Mia has so unless she and Levi met and started dating the first day, it’s weird that their relationship has developed to the point they’re at. Mia catches Christina whispering to someone on the phone and hanging up once she realizes Mia is in the room a couple times. She takes this to mean Christina’s secretly dating someone in town (or possibly a rich man from a neighboring town who she creates a whole imaginary story about). The first time Mia sees Christina and Levi together in a group setting, she suspects they’ve been secretly dating because they behave like two people who’ve already met. Considering how small Magic Springs is supposed to be and how Christina doesn’t spend all her time with Mia, it’s difficult for me to accept Mia’s assumption that they must be a couple based on the fact they’ve already met. By that logic, anyone Mia hasn’t directly introduced must be dating Christina if it seems like they’ve met.

Onto the mystery of this cozy mystery, Adele’s murder…or the missing corkscrew…or the missing chef’s knife…or Mia’s assailant…or Mia’s creepy secret admirer. There were so many mysteries that there actually ended up being four villains (five if you count Isaac). John Louis is a realtor who accuses Mia of swooping in and buying the old schoolhouse out from under him. He repeatedly tries pressuring Mia to sell the property to him. Roughly three-quarters of the way through the novel, he hides out in the secret tunnel connecting to the old schoolhouse and holds Mia at gunpoint to try to force her to sign the paperwork to sell to him. He wants to bulldoze the building and build a mega grocery store in its place at any cost.

“Look, let me tell you how it’s going to go down if you don’t sign here and now. I’ll go home. My wife will testify that we were together making love this morning and Baldwin will believe my alibi over your crazy story. Then one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, there will be an unfortunate home invasion at your grandmother’s house and she’ll be shot trying to defend her little dog. Hell, I’ll probably shoot the dog too.”

Mia’s blood ran cold. “I’ll tell Baldwin this too. Don’t you think he’ll be suspicious when it happens just like I said?”

“Maybe, but I’ll have an alibi again. And your grandmother will be just as dead.” (Cahoon 214)

He’s conveniently apprehended by Officer Baldwin. Next up is Adele’s nephew, William Danford, who turns out to be a conman named Samuel Jacobs. William Danford is deceased—Mia discovers this information at her local library, which makes my librarian heart happy—and Samuel has been trying to con Adele into giving him money. Mia witnesses a strange interaction between him and a local couple where he talks about selling Adele’s estate to them once the paperwork goes through. He leans on Adele’s attorney, Barney Mann, to expedite the closing procedures, and Mia even suspects he might have killed Barney, which thankfully isn’t true.

As it turns out, the only killer is Helen Marcum. Adele is throwing a party in which she plans on telling everyone that Helen and her husband, Travis, used to be working class citizens before winning the lottery and moving to Magic Springs. Mia reads an article about the couple winning the lottery and thinks nothing of it. Adele hints to people that Helen and Travis are “nouveau riche,” and the only person we see reacting to this information, Grans, acts like that information is unimportant. It seems like a flimsy excuse for murdering Adele. The couple somehow pair up with Samuel (posing as William Danford), which doesn’t make any logical sense because both parties would have had to reveal themselves to the other and that requires trust I wouldn’t give to a stranger.

“That’s what I tried to tell Adele. When I told her I would kill her before I’d let her tell everyone I had been poor, she laughed. In my face.” Helen’s cheeks turned red at the memory. “She laughed at me. She said she was using the party to clear up a few misconceptions, one of them being me and my husband’s rightful place in the community. That we were no better than the people who worked at the Lodge or the grocery.” (Cahoon 244)

            Adele is possibly another villain based on the way she treated others. Helen lures Mia to Adele’s estate under the guise that Grans has fallen there and needs medical attention. She plans on killing Mia, and it’s revealed that Travis has been making the threatening phone calls to Mia. During their conversation, Mia dials a number without looking at her phone, and it ends up being city hall. Officer Baldwin arrests Helen.

We’re still left without knowing who Mia’s creepy stalker who has been gifting her back her lost items is. Another mystery is that Mr. Darcy, Mia’s cat familiar, is currently housing the soul of a man named Dorian Alexander. It’s mentioned briefly twice, but never explained. Dorothy Purcell is a ghost haunting the hospital in town that Mia lands herself in when she’s attacked at her home by an unknown assailant. Grans is startled by this fact when Mia tells her but doesn’t elaborate or acknowledge her unease. The ghost appears two more times to give warnings to Mia. She might be a potential recurring character, but her presence caused more questions.

And, finally, there is no poison pie. Zero. I have no idea why the book is called that. Adele is stabbed to death. Mia is hit on the back of the head. Two people threaten to shoot Mia. There is no mention of poison or poisoned pies. On the back of the book, it states the book includes recipes. The only recipe is at the very end for a basic apple pie. I don’t remember anyone making an apple pie during the story. All throughout the novel, Mia workshops different breakfast casseroles, and I think those would have made fitting recipes to include at the end instead of the apple pie. I thought it might be nice to make the recipe, so check back for those results.

 

Sources

Cahoon, Lynn. One Poison Pie. Kensington Books, 2021.

King, C. Bailey, and Bridget V. Warren. “Intellectual Property Protection for Recipes.” For the Defense, July 2019, pp. 59–63, https://www.bradley.com/-/media/files/insights/publications/2019/07/intellectual-property-protection-for-recipes.pdf?la=en. Accessed 7 Nov. 2021.