In the small town of Broken Rope, Missouri, a thriving cooking school owned by Missouri Winston is getting ready for its annual cleaning. Miz (as she's known by the locals) is assisted by her granddaughter Isabelle, known to most as Betts. Their plans get tossed to the side, though, when Betts gets a call from town's archivist and fake sheriff, Jake. He suggests that a busload of travelling foodies with no place to stay (due to scheduling mishap at the local hotel) stay at the cooking school for the night. This seems like a workable solution until the foodies show up and everyone realizes the retiree tourists won't be content on cots.

Betts works out a deal with a fellow Broken Rope local who is getting ready to open a bed-and-breakfast. Everything seems to be going well until Betts gets a call that three of the foodies have disappeared without a trace. Betts turns to Cliff, one of the local police officers for help. While Betts trusts Cliff (they are dating, rekindling a high school romance), she worries that a small town police force can't handle a triple kidnapping case.

This is complicated by another special relationship that Betts has... with ghosts. Both Betts and Miz are able to see and talk to ghosts, and as Broken Rope has a long history with criminals, there are several haunting the small town. While Miz is used to this, Betts is still geting acclimated to this newfound talent. Sally Swarthmore is infamous in Broken Rope for having killed both of her parents with an axe one afternoon. She was convicted of the double murder and died shortly after the trial. Sally appears to Betts, and asks Betts to help her find her diary. She believes that the diary holds evidence that the murder of her parents was justified.

I had read the first book in the Country Cooking School Mystery Series, and I really looked forward to reading this book. The characters were just as fun and quirky as I remembered them, and I was happy to visit Broken Rope again. As someone who has always been fascinated by Lizzie Borden, I recognized Sally's story as a take of Lizzie's, and I was glad that Ms. Shelton acknowledged the parallels in the afterword. While I enjoyed both mysteries in this book, it was a little confusing about which one was supposed to the main story and which was the subplot, as they each seemed equally important (this is a very minor consideration, as it may have been the point to have two simultaneous mysteries).

I was also disappointed that the solution to both mysteries was pretty obvious from the start. However, this will not stop me from making it a point to keep this series on my wish list!

Book Summary

At Gram’s Country Cooking School in Broken Rope, Missouri, Isabelle “Betts” Winston and her grandmother share the secrets of delicious home-style recipes. But there’s one secret they keep from their classes—their ability to talk to ghosts from the town’s colorful past… 
Betts and Gram agree to help their friend Jake at Broken Rope’s Historical Society by accommodating some foodie tourists for the night and occupying them with cooking lessons. It couldn’t be worse timing when the pair encounter the ax-wielding ghost of Sally Swarthmore, one of Broken Rope’s legendary murderers, who pleads with Betts to help find her diary--a diary that could prove that Sally was really a victim, not a villain.
 
But they soon have a modern-day murder on their hands when one of the tourists turns up dead with a noose around his neck and two other tourists are nowhere to be found. Now Betts needs to put the cooking classes on the back burner to untangle two knotty mysteries and rope in a cold-blooded killer.