BOOK REVIEW: Al Dente’s Inferno by Stephanie Cole #aldentesinferno #bookreview #cozymystery

I’m very in and out on cozy mysteries lately and really throughout the pandemic. The light, often silly appeal of a murder mystery with very little darkness as reflected by their punny titles appeals to me. But lately I have found it harder to pay attention to them when the balance between cute plot elements and actual mystery is off.

Despite being short, it took me about two weeks to finish Al Dente’s Inferno. This title is top notch as far as cozy puns go. I loved the cultural setting in Italy at a ramshackle cooking school with a restaurant led by a renowned chef. Nell arrives from the US to find the school is in much worse shape than she realized. She meets the handsome Pete (and an unexpected porcupine), and then a crew of a Netflix documentary arrive and she rushes to get a school stood up out of… well, rubble.

When Chef goes missing mid meal, Nell can’t imagine things getting worse. Until someone ends up murdered, that is! Nell is determined to find Chef and the murderer, particularly since a past connection between herself and the victim has become forefront.

I enjoyed the setting, the wacky characters, and the Italian dialogue which at times isn’t even translated, adding both authenticity and a bit of confusion! I do think that the author probably needed to balance this, as at times I really didn’t know what was happening and I wasn’t sure I truly cared to figure it out from the context. I would like the mystery to be a bit more forefront—it doesn’t even really get started until the halfway point. From there, suspects were eliminated pretty quickly so it didn’t have the big reveal I was looking for.

Charming and a light break from books that make you think too much—this is fun for those that do like the American cozy style and like the culinary elements. Ultimately, I wanted a bit more mystery and a bit less fluff.

About the Book

An American chef will have to serve up more than good eats if she wants to establish a successful farm-to-table cooking school in Tuscany, in this charming first installment in a new cozy mystery series set in Italy.

When Nell Valenti is offered a chance to move to Tuscany to help transform an aging villa into a farm-to-table cooking school, she eagerly accepts. After all, both her job and her love life in America have been feeling stale. Plus, she’ll get the chance to work under the acclaimed Italian Chef Claudio Orlandini.

But Nell gets more than she bargained for when she arrives. With only a day to go until the launch dinner for the cooking school, the villa is in shambles, and Chef O is blissfully oblivious of the work that needs to be done before a group of local dignitaries arrive, along with a filmmaker sent to showcase and advertise the new school. The situation only worsens when Nell discovers that the filmmaker is an ex-boyfriend, and he’s found murdered later that night. Even worse, Chef O has disappeared, and accusations of murder could shut the school down for good.

As tensions reach a boiling point at the villa, Nell must throw her chef’s hat into the ring, and investigate the murder herself. Because if she fails to solve the case, her career, or even her life, could be next on the chopping block.