Sex and Salmonella (A Tory Bauer Mystery Book 2) Kindle Edition

Sex and Salmonella is the second book in the Tory Bauer Mystery book. The title of the book gives the reason that Tory Bauer in drawn into the mystery of the book. Tory Bauer is a 40 something, divorced waitress who works and lives in Delphi South Dakota. She is asked by her not so loved cousin to check up on a carnival that is coming to Delphi. Her cousin has food poisoning and Tory realizes that she will travel to this town with a married man that she is secretly having an affair with. So she agrees to go and is drawn into the mystery.This book does not fit perfectly into the cozy mystery genre. Tory is a amateur sleuth but some of the language and the affair she is having is outside what a cozy mystery usually entails. This book and the series so far is just plain funny and entertaining. Kathleen Taylor has a very good wit. The books reminds me a little bit of Joan Hess or Janet Evanovich due to the humor.The characters are just delightful and show their flaws. The town on Delphi South Dakota is a character in itself with the harsh weather. I feel like I discovered little gems of books that are almost forgotten from the nineties. They are now available on Kindle and I think in paperback too. If you like your mysteries with humor, great characters and a distinctive location, you should enjoy this series.

I read this because the series was recommended as better than the Jake Hines series set in Minnesota. I think I prefer Hines, partly because he's a detective, so not just stumbling upon murders. I also thought the Dakota town was too filled with oddballs to be realistic. So I recommend you give the Jake Hines series a try.Another you might like is the Trudy Roundtree series. She's come back to her small Southern home town to be a police officer, with her older cousin as her skeptical boss.

I've enjoyed all the Tory Bauer mysteries, and I hope to see another one soon. I think she does a great job of creating believable characters and portraying local color. Whenever she writes about "People in the Midwest," I find myself nodding and laughing at what she says. No, these books don't have the psychological depth of Wendy Hornsby or Patricia Cornwell, but Wendy Hornsby and Patricia Cornwell don't make me laugh, either. I wholeheartedly recommend these books for people who know small towns and want to laugh a lot.