Blog Tour & Giveaway: Death on Eat Street by J.J. Cook

I’m pleased to welcome J.J. Cook here today to talk about their new book, Death on Eat Street. I love culinary mysteries so this one is definitely high on my list.

1. Tell me about your new release.

Death on Eat Street is about Zoe Chase who gives up her job at a bank to follow her heart, and become a food entrepreneur.  She buys a diner that needs substantial renovations, and creates a food truck to finance that plan.  Her ace-in-the-hole is the biscuit bowl: a deep friend biscuit with the center hollowed out and filled with pie filling, custard, beef stew, or chili.  She has some difficulties getting started when she finds a dead rival food truck owner, but has friends who help her through the bad times.

2. What inspired you to write mysteries?

We have both always loved mysteries! Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew.  We love the puzzle, and solving it while we write the story.

3. What is the most interesting/strange thing you had to research for your books?

We actually got in the middle of a food truck feud over parking places.  We put that into Death on Eat Street since we lived through it.  People hire others to keep certain places open in good sales areas.  Failing that, they get physical pushing other food trucks out of the way. It was a strange, and scary experience!

4. What are you working on now?

We are working on our next food truck book, FRY HARD, and our seventh Peggy Lee Garden Mystery, LETHAL LILY, which is out in May.  Our first book in the Retired Witches Spell Book Mystery, SPELL BOOKED, will be out in December.

5. Are there any authors or books that have influenced you to become a writer?

We read across genres – mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy – and like to write in all those genres.  We love Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Tanith Lee, Carole Nelson Douglas, and Barbara Hambly.

6. What was the first book you ever wrote and was it published?

The first book that we wrote was A Family for the Sheriff, and it was published by Silhouette in 1999 under one of our pseudonyms, Elyssa Grant.

Thank you so much for being here on Books-n-Kisses.

Thanks for having us here today!

About the Author:

J.J. Cook writes award-winning, bestselling mystery fiction as themselves, Joyce and Jim Lavene, and Ellie Grant. They have written and published more than 70 novels for Harlequin, Berkley, Amazon, and Gallery Books along with hundreds of non-fiction articles for national and regional publications. They live in rural North Carolina with their family. Visit them at www.jjcook.net.

Twitter/Facebook

Zoe Chase always wanted to own her own restaurant—but first, she’ll have to serve up a heaping helping of meals on wheels, with a side of mystery. When she’s once again passed over for a promotion at work, Zoe decides to take the big leap and go for her dream. She quits, gives up her fancy digs, and buys a fixer-upper diner in a shady part of town. To keep above water during the renovation, she buys a used food truck to serve the downtown and waterfront of Mobile, Alabama. Zoe starts to dish out classic Southern food—but her specialty is her deep-fried biscuit bowls that blow traditional bread bowls away. After a promising start, things start to go downhill faster than a food truck without brakes. First, someone tries to rob the cash register. Next, Zoe is threatened by the owner of a competing food truck for taking their spot. And when the owner ends up dead inside Zoe’s rolling restaurant, Zoe and her sole employee, Ollie, find themselves hopping out of the frying pan into the fryer. They need to find the real killer, before both of them get burned.

Amazon/B&N

Jennifer’s Review of Death on Eat Street

Review (4.5 Stars): Zoe was a great character for me because she took a chance on making her dreams come true and quit her dead-end job to open up a diner. Her family thought she was crazy because all she wanted to do was make people smile by having them eat her food.  She quickly becomes involved in the death of a food truck competitor whose dead body ends up in the driver seat of her food truck.  Even though she is cleared as a suspect, Zoe still finds herself in dangerous situations from someone who believes that she is hiding something that belonged to the deceased.  She now has to find the true identity of the killer before her dreams of success go up in smoke.

This is the first book in the Biscuit Bowl Food Truck mystery series and I’ve already become a fan of Zoe and her friends.  I liked how Zoe was truly a good person who always looked for ways to help other people even though she barely knew them.  She came from a rich family who tried to push her into staying at a boring job and marry a guy who was absolutely wrong for her.  She believed in the people that she just met and they turned out to be people that she could really count on when her family wouldn’t support her dreams. I thought the murder mystery was exciting and full of plot twists that will definitely keep you on your toes.  Death on Eat Street is a delectable mystery that will have you craving one of Zoe’s famous biscuit bowls and I can’t wait to see what is in store for Zoe next.

Giveaway

I have one copy of Death on Eat Street to giveaway. This giveaway is for US Residents only.  To be entered in the drawing by April 10th, please leave a comment or question for J.J. Cook: