Boiled Over is the second book in the Maine Clambake Mysteries by Barbara Ross. In the first book, Clammed Up, we met Julia Snowden and her family. Her family has run the clambake on Morrow Island for generations, and is in financial trouble. She relocates to Maine to help out her family and ends up solving a murder. In the second book in the series it seems that someone else in town has murder on their mind, when a charred body is discovered in "The Claminator", a contraption they use to bake clams on the pier for the Founder's Weekend celebration. When one of her employees is accused of murder, Julia decides it's time to investigate a murder again.
I'm not a seafood person. This might sound weird since I grew up in Australia and eating seafood is as natural as breathing to Australians, but I've never liked the flavour. However, this hasn't stopped me from enjoying this series! I love the way Barbara Ross describes the clambake and I think one year I need to journey down to Maine to try it for myself! With the mouth-watering recipes at the back of the book and the delicious mystery, Barbara Ross certainly is going to have a lot of readers wanting to discover Maine and clambakes.
I liked the murder mystery a lot. With Cabe Stone, who works for the Snowden family, running away from the scene of the crime, and the victim not being who they thought he was, it was a very tangled web to unweave. Julia sticks to it like a dog with a bone, and eventually solves the murder and even provides a few other answers that were left hanging in the air.
Boiled Over was a very good mystery, but I have to give Barbara Ross credit for something other than the mystery and the delicious food descriptions. She takes the reader back over the last few months between Clammed Up ending and Boiled Over beginning. While most of the flashbacks involve the mystery, she has given the reader a more detailed view of the residents of Busman's Harbour. Between these two books I feel like I know these characters better and I absolutely can't wait to set foot back there again and dive into whatever mystery Julia Snowden has to solve next!
If you enjoy culinary cozy mysteries don't hesitate to add Clammed Up and Boiled Over on your summer reading list.
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