THE PIEROGI PERIL

A Buffalo-area restaurant owner and her feminist grandmother are an impressive sleuthing duo.

Lydia Wienewski has an overwhelming amount of work to do, so it’s not surprising that she forgot to enter an international cooking competition with her specialty pierogis. Her father is recovering from a stroke, so she’s still helping in the family butcher shop, which lost customers after a murdered man was found in the backyard smoker. Lydia’s Lakeside Café and Bakery, where she showcases Polish American food, is consuming her every waking hour as it slowly builds clientele, to the extent that she’s been camping out there to save the time she’d spend driving home. Considering that she dropped out of a prestigious Canadian baking school over disagreements with Madame Delphine Chenault and a short fling with her son, Pierre, Lydia is gobsmacked to see Madame at her restaurant, full of compliments and the revelation that she’s one of the judges at the competition. Lydia is back together with Stanley, her longtime boyfriend, a budding lawyer who helped when she and Grandma Mary solved the smokehouse murder. After staying overnight in the cafe, she and Stanley find Madame’s body on the rocky Lake Erie shore below the cafe’s deck—and then Lydia finds her grandmother parked in a station wagon with her boyfriend, police Detective Harry Nowicki, and learns a bit too much about their private life. Since the cafe isn’t in Nowicki’s area, they call the Acorn Bay police, but not before taking photos of the scene. Once again Lydia and her free-spirited Grandma Mary are suspects in a murder case and don’t hesitate to investigate.

Lots of local western New York color mixes with amusing characters in a mystery sure to delight.