Key West Food Mystery Debuts with Link to Topretirements

January 3, 2012 — Key West, a great place to live as well as retirement spot, is the scene of a new murder mystery series launching today. What’s more the author of “An Appetite for Murder” is the wife of your Topretirements editor, writing under the pen name Lucy Burdette.

Roberta Isleib (aka Lucy) set the scene for her third mystery series in Key West, that bohemian, food-focused resort town. An Appetite for Murder, published by NAL/Penguin on January 3, features her new character, Hayley Snow, as an aspiring food critic and amateur sleuth living in America’s southernmost island paradise. Hayley Snow follows a new boyfriend to the Conch Republic, otherwise known as Key West. But instead of landing a coveted job as a food critic and living happily ever after, she ends up as the prime suspect in the murder of her boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Or at least that’s what the local police think after she makes it publicly clear she’d like to curdle this woman’s cream sauce. Hayley must solve the murder, and fast, or the only food she’ll be reviewing will be what’s served on steel trays in the Florida State penitentiary.

Isleib’s new series uses the pen name Lucy Burdette, which is borrowed from her maternal grandmother. DEATH IN FOUR COURSES, the second book in the Key West series, is scheduled for a September 2012 release. Her first mystery series included 5 books featuring Cassie Burdette, an aspiring golf professional.  Isleib’s Advice Column series featured Rebecca Butterman, a fictional pyschologist who lived in Guilford near the Stone House restaurant with a private practice in New Haven. Isleib’s books and short stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She is a past-president of Sisters in Crime, an organization founded to support women crime fiction writers.

You can read at a sample at LucyBurdette.com, buy the book at your favorite book seller, or from Amazon.com. Here is a fun review of the book from the Florida Book Review, which will help explain why it is also useful as a way to find out why Key West is such a fascinating place to live.

P.S. Don’t miss her fun Key West quiz – you might win a free copy of the book!