‘Savvy Summers and the Po’boy Perils’ by Sandra Jackson-Opoku. Minotaur, 304 pages, $28
The subgenre of culinary mysteries has undergone a sea change in the past 16 years. These mysteries don’t just feature an amateur sleuth who is an expert cook, but they also use food as a way to explore culture, heritage and background, as in Sandra Jackson-Opoku’s new series, the second of which “Savvy Summers and the Po’boy Perils.”
Jackson-Opoku centers her delightful series around Savvy Summers, the owner of a soul food restaurant on Chicago’s South Side.
Savvy’s restaurant connects her to the community and to her late great-aunt, after whom she named her restaurant, Essie’s Place, and whose recipes fill her menu. Those recipes are one reason for Savvy’s success. The recipes also are part of the restaurateur’s legacy; Aunt Essie brought those recipes with her decades before when she migrated from Mississippi to Chicago. Aunt Essie came to Chicago during The Great Migration, when roughly 6 million Black Americans located from the rural South to urban areas. The Great Migration is considered to be between 1910 and 1970.
‘Savvy Summers and the Po’Boy Perils’ by Sandra Jackson-Opoku. (Minotaur/Courtesy)
Savvy’s expertise in the kitchen is well known in her community, but she can’t seem to master some staples of Creole cooking that she recently added to her menu.
Still, Savvy is able to pull together a Creole menu to cater a friend’s luncheon for business colleagues in “Savvy Summers and the Po’boy Perils.” Her food receives high praise, but a couple days later, one of her friend’s employees dies, possibly from an overdose of an extremely spicy hot sauce.
Jackson-Opoku keeps the light plot realistic with believable action and characters who could be your neighbors. Savvy’s involvement in the investigation stems from her desire to save her business. To show Savvy’s connection to the community, the novel ends on a major Chicago event that recently happened. And naturally, the author includes recipes that may drive you to the kitchen.
Jackson-Opoku’s series is off to an excellent start. The first novel in this series, “Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes,” was nominated for the 2025 Mary Higgins Clark Award.
So many lies
Hilary Davidson’s new novel is “Every Lie I Told.” (Anna Ty Bergman/Courtesy)
‘Every Lie I Told’ by Hilary Davidson. Blackstone, 361 pages, $29.99
Multi-award winning author Hilary Davidson fully leans into the unreliable narrator as, true to the title, the lies come fast and furious in “Every Lie I Told.”
In her eighth novel, Davidson wraps a family drama with workplace intrigue in a plot that starts on a high note, then accelerates from there. And there are lies, so many untruths that one doesn’t know who to root for. That duplicitousness makes for a rich story as “Every Lie I Told” keeps the reader on their toes and the edge of their seat with every chapter.
Jackie Swift admits she’s “a professional liar.” She rationalizes her lying by saying all people “filter and crop and fake” their lives. “Most of all, we lie to ourselves,” she adds.
‘Every Lie I Told’ by Hilary Davidson. (Blackstone/Courtesy)
Lying is a major part of Jackie’s career as she works for a public relations firm that specializes in making nasty clients look good. Chaos control is her specialty. But her current firm is sunshine and roses compared to the toxic company she left six months ago.
In the middle of the night, Jackie gets a frantic phone call from her younger sister Madi, who is calling from the home of Jackie’s former boss, Erick Mortenson. Jackie arrives to find Erick dead and Madi, a social media influencer and tarot card reader, missing. Although she was friendly with Erick, Jackie knew Erick could be mean, abusive to his employees and was well known for his parties with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. He had enemies but Erick’s ex-wife was even worse with a violent streak. Jackie searches for Madi, wondering if her sister is a victim or a killer while maneuvering an oppressively demanding office and reflecting on her own previous crimes.
Davidson keeps the interest high in her unlikable characters in “Every Lie I Told.” Deception was never so much fun.
