FED UP

A graduate student based in Boston unmasks a killer.

No doubt about it: Chloe Carter’s life is hectic. She’s planning her very pregnant friend Adrianna’s wedding, working at her parents’ landscape business and longing for more time with her chef boyfriend Josh Driscoll (Turn Up the Heat, 2008, etc.), who’s competing with two other chefs in a local TV series. The chefs, director and cameraman go to a market, choose someone and offer to cook the lucky winner a marvelous meal that evening. Chloe is along for the latest taping. Though it takes longer than usual, a man is chosen, a perfect dinner is prepared and his wife dies in agony after complaining about the food. Luckily for Josh, she’s been killed by digitalis, not food poisoning. Chloe can’t help playing sleuth even though she’s bogged down with last-minute wedding problems. Adrianna’s mother is a witch; the bridegroom’s family goes in for annoying practical jokes; and Josh, unbeknownst to Chloe, is looking for a new job even as he’s catering the event. The dead woman was the mystery critic who had published nasty reviews of all the chefs present at her death; the cameraman who’s filming the wedding seems uncommonly interested in the unpleasant aspects of his job; and the director may have known the husband supposedly chosen at random. The climactic wedding is spectacular in more ways than one.

A pleasant cozy so packed with food tips and appended recipes that it could cause a food frenzy.