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Rebel Without a Cake: A Piece of Cake Mystery    by Jacklyn Brady Amazon.com order for
Rebel Without a Cake
by Jacklyn Brady
Order:  USA  Can
Berkley, 2014 (2014)
Paperback, e-Book
* *   Reviewed by Mary Ann Smyth

Rita Lucerno has been offered a large catering project. She only has to please a very discerning and officious matron, and prove to this woman that she and her staff at Zydeco Cakes in New Orleans have the ability to make the affair one to remember.

Rita was in the process of divorcing her husband when he died leaving her with a mother-in-law, Miss Frankie, who makes her feel like one of the family – except when she butts into Rita's business.

Miss Frankie's dear friend Bernice staggers in Miss Frankie's door, disheveled and distraught, and so begins an escapade that Rita would rather not have to deal with. Bernice is sure she has just seen the ghost of her Uncle Cooch looking in her window.

While tracing something that does not exist, Rita meets Miss Frankie's family - with wispy grey beards and moonshine, and women in stout shoes. A whole different community exists in swamp country. One not at all like cosmopolitan New Orleans. There are home cures and alligator steaks, as well as rattlesnakes that dislike humans as much as humans dislike them.

As Rita tries to help Bernice discover who might have been looking in her window at night, she discovers that she, Bernice and Miss Frankie could be in deep trouble. The killing kind of trouble!

Rebel Without a Cake by Jacklyn Brady is a fun read, with great dialogue and yummy recipes at the end of the book. Recipes that would probably not be in your mama's recipe repertoire.

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