Jill Winters Lime Ricky

Lime Ricky

Jill Winters

NAL, May, 2006, $13.95

ISBN 0451218361

After three years at a deluxe resort in Carmel, California and having just broken up with her boyfriend, Gretchen Darrow accepts a job at the Cooking Channel in New York working on the Susanna Tate show. When her cousin Dana leaves scented candles burning, their Manhattan flat catches fire. Firefighter Broderick "Rick" Pellucci puts out the "girlie fire" and afterward scornfully lectures Gretchen.

Coincidentally, Rick's brother Romeo Romero is a star on the Cooking Channel. He asks Rick to protect him from death threats that both take seriously except for those moments when the firefighter encounters Gretchen. However, Rick thinks that Gretchen wants to sue him to gain access to Romeo. Still when one of the staffers dies from poisoned mushrooms, Rick and Jill investigate finding evidence that makes his sibling the prime suspect.

LIME RICKY is a JUST PEACHY romantic mystery starring a likable heroine and a wonderful at times grumpy male. The cozy is fun to follow as Rick with Jill's help investigate a homicide that increasingly looks like Romeo committed the deed even as they fall in love, but he cannot accept a beauty like her would choose him over his handsome sibling. The coincidence of the Cooking Channel aside, Jill Winters concocts another tasty drink.

Harriet Klausner