What started off as a simple cook off for charity - a competition for the best chicken soup ends up much more complicated. One of the participants ends up in the freezer with a knife in his chest and Detective Shepler, the homicide detective assigned to the case is replaced by Detective Pitt because of a conflict of interest. The new detective seems to be accusing everyone and just hoping someone will volunteer themselves as the murderer.

At this rate no one will ever be charged with the murder and will get away with the crime and may be able to commit another murder. Right now the Pitt thinks someone did it to win the competition so the charity they wanted the winnings to go to would get the money. Somehow that doesn't make sense to Sophie so she begins to investigate on her own.

Her investigation leads her into many different twists and turns in the plot as she learns more about each of the characters who have some connection to the competition or the investigation. She even suspects Detective Pitt himself.

If you like food, you'll like this book as it talks a lot about food - sweet food, savoury food, and some of the recipes are in the back of the book including Sophie and Amy's recipe for their entry into the competition.

I enjoyed the talk around the food. I could almost visualize and smell it. Too bad books don't come with samples! At least this one comes with recipes.

Don't forget the romance too (or lack of it) as husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends interact with one another. This was a fairly clean romance novel but there were a moderate number of swear words in the text.

This was a very interesting cozy mystery that was a lot of fun to read. There are other books in this series by this author, but each one can be read as a stand-alone novel. I gave Chicken Soup and Homicide 5 stars out of 5.

Thank you to the author for providing a copy of the book in exchange for a fair and honest review. A positive opinion was not required. All thoughts are my own.

This review was published on my blog Shelf Full of Books http://kathrynsshelffullofbooks.blogspot.com/2015/02/chicken-soup-and-homicide-b... ( )