Sally Solari Mysteries
Best Humorous Mystery
2019
Lefty Award Nominee
DEATH AL FRESCO Now Available From Crooked Lane Books
It's up to Sally Solari to serve up a killer before their family reputation goes up in smoke.
It’s early autumn in Santa Cruz and restaurateur Sally Solari, inspired by the eye-popping canvases of Paul Gauguin, the artist for whom her restaurant is named, decides to enroll in a plein air painting class. But the beauty of the Monterey Bay coastline is shattered during one of their outings when Sally’s dog, Buster, sniffs out a corpse entangled in a pile of kelp.
The body is identified as Gino, a local fisherman and a regular at Sally’s father’s restaurant, Solari's, until he disappeared after dining there a few nights before.
Witnesses claim he left reeling drunk, but his waitress swears the old man had only two beers with his meal. And then the fingers begin to point at Sally’s dad for negligently allowing an inebriated customer to walk home alone at night.
From a long menu of suspects, including a cast of colorful characters who frequent the historic Santa Cruz fisherman’s wharf, Sally must serve up the tall order of clearing her father’s name in Death al Fresco, Leslie Karst’s third culinary mystery.
