WHO KILLED OLIVE SOUFFL¸

As this entry in the Crime Files series opens, homicide detective Angel Cardoni (who seems to be in her mid-20s) is driving through a blizzard with her faithful dog, Miro. She swerves to avoid a deer in the road and ends up with her car nearly buried in a huge snowbank. Luckily, a nearby country inn is two days from opening for ski season, and Angel and Miro take refuge there at the invitation of the inn's award-winning French chef, Olive Souffiâ. Angel's exhausted sleep is interrupted by the sound of screams; an employee and a delivery man have just found Olive's body on the floor of a walk-in freezer, surrounded by heads of cabbage. Although there's a dearth of evidence--no murder weapon, little blood, no hint of a struggle--and the medical examiner can't get there until the roads have been cleared, Angel resolves to find the killer. She does, in spite of numerous red herrings thrown in her path, and with enough brio to satisfy readers who figure out the mystery first; as Angel pursues her investigation with an ad hoc laboratory made up entirely of kitchen equipment, a variety of simple science lessons become clear. Despite the ages of the players (all adults, some middle-aged) and simplistic plotting, there is plenty to involve readers who like their mysteries fairly straightforward and refreshingly gore-free.