Toast Mortem (A Hemlock Falls Mystery)

by Claudia Bishop

Book Overview

Bernard LeVasque has opened a multimillion-dollar cooking school in Hemlock Falls--and has even stolen customers from Sarah and Meg Quilliam's inn. But someone finds the infamous chef too bitter--and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425230287
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.6" x 0.8" x 4.1"

Customer Reviews

Continuation of a favorite series

I was quite excited to find a new Hemlock Falls Mystery. I was under the impression the series had ended. I hope there will be many more. Meg and Quill are at it again. I love their sisterly banter and the many characters who work at the Inn. Plus now Quill has a young son. And with the multimillion dollar cooking school in town and the obnoxious head chef, things are a bit dicey. As always, she has a couple of stories intertwined and does a great job of having them coexist but not be disruptive to the other. I like how her bringing in the cooking school brings in new characters and opportunities for future books. I do hope this means the series has a bright future. I highly recommend this book and the entire series.

toast mortem

have read all the hemlock falls mystery books. they just keep getting better and better. totally addicted to them. claudia bishop is one of my favorite authors. you will really enjoy this one.

The best in the series

I won't retell the story since others have done that so well. I'll just say that this is the best of the series. Earlier in the series I had felt that the books had bogged down into just rehashing the same relationships, arguments, and actions and was getting tired of Claudia Bishop's books. The last couple of books, however, have moved along and we no longer seem the very same situations from book to book. This one seemed fresh, even with the same people. The addition of the baby helped a lot, and even the characters seemed to move out of the tight molds they were in. I liked it very much and think the school near their Inn is probably going to be the source of lots of new material for future books. This is really a book worth reading

exciting amateur sleuth

When her husband Myles the investigator went somewhere in the Middle East on a government assignment, his wife Sarah "Quill" Quilliam-McHale returns to her rooms at the Inn at Hemlock Falls. She is the owner and manager with her half-sister Meg who is also the chef. It is Meg who is upset due to her gourmet meals being ignored as everyone is dining at the La Bonne Goute Cuklinary Arts Academy whose owner Bernard Le Vasque wrote the bestselling cookbook Brilliance in the Kitchen and had a five year run on TV as a master chef. Bernard is an arrogant peacock who believes he can get away with anything he desires. He asks Meg to work for him, but she in a rage throws a sharp meat cleaver at the pompous chef. Meg is arrested, but get's out on bail. The sisters steal their rival's pastry chef Clarissa Sparrow to work at the Inn. Levesque gets even by arranging dirty tricks to drive the innkeepers crazy. When Qull goes the Academy, she finds his murdered corpse. The police find evidence to arrest Clarissa, but her sibling employers believe she is innocent so set out to prove so; even dodging bullets to achieve their goal. The latest Inn at Hemlock Falls mystery is a fun tale that has a sort of throwback feel to when Quill was not married as Myles is away for most of the exciting purebred amateur sleuth story line. The victim is vile so much so that seemingly everyone at his Academy, even his bookkeeping wife, loathes him; thus suspects abound. Series fans will appreciate the antics of the mom and the chef as they set out to find a killer. Harriet Klausner