Mindy Quigley kicks off a new cozy mystery series set in Geneva Bay, Wisconsin with Six Feet Deep Dish. I’ll admit I wasn’t so sure about the protagonist when I read Delilah (Dee) O’Leary’s description of herself as a micromanaging chef. But, after the first chapter, I realized she was a softie at heart. Dee comes from a working class background in Chicago, lost her mother when she was only twelve, and her father just a year ago from cancer. And, of course, she had to make it in the restaurant business. Okay, she’s allowed to be a micromanager.

On the surface, everything looks great for the opening of her pizza restaurant. She’s now engaged to Sam Van Meter, a wealthy tech millionaire. They’re renovating a mansion in Geneva Bay, a place she always loved because her Great Aunt Biz lives there, the woman who inspired her to be a chef. And, Sam’s her business partner, providing the money for the restaurant. But, he’s easy going, and Dee is wound tight. That doesn’t work on the eve of the restaurant opening, and he packs up, leaving her with their shared cat, Butterball.

The soft opening goes great, despite a waiter who is never around, and Auntie Biz who seems a little out of it. By the time it’s almost over, Dee is intoxicated, angry, and in deep denial that she might have a broken engagement. But, she starts to sober up quickly when she finds a dead man outside, and Auntie Biz standing over him with a gun that she claims she owns.

In many ways, Six Feet Deep Dish is a typical cozy. But, Quigley shakes up the formula a little with the cast. Dee is a “queen-szed working-class girl with exaggerated facial features”. Yes, there is a hot cop, Detective Calvin Capone, great-grandson of Chicago’s mobster. But, Dee’s sous chef is gay. She hires a ex-con as her dishwasher. Butterball actually has an important role in the story, but he’s no more than a cat. And, there’s Auntie Biz with a gun in her purse.

You might start Six Feet Deep Dish because it’s the first in a series with a pizza restaurant background. The food will make you hungry, but the mystery itself, and the characters , will be enough to make you ask for seconds. More, please!

Mindy Quigley’s website ishttps://mindyquigley.com/

Six Feet Deep Dish by Mindy Quigley. St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 2022. ISBN 9781250792433 (paperbacks), 320p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent me a galley, hoping I would review it.