GUILT AND GINATAAN

The 35th annual Shady Palms Corn Festival, co-hosted with neighboring Shelbyville, Illinois, kicks off with a murder that rocks both towns.

Shelbyville is bigger than Shady Palms, with more storefronts and activities, but fewer homicides—at least until Yvonne Maldonado, the wife of Shelbyville mayor Judy Reyes, is found stabbed to death in, naturally, a corn maze. Which town has proprietary rights to the crime? For Lila Macapagal, the co-owner of the Brew-ha Cafe, that’s less important than whether the cops will release Adeena Awan, Lila’s best friend and business partner, who was found on the scene with a bloody knife in her hand. Fans of this ebullient series, along with anyone else who knows Adeena, will instantly assume that the knife was planted by the actual killer. But there seem to be precious few suspects: Her Honor herself, whose joint bank account Yvonne had been emptying; Zack, the loyal assistant who’d do anything for her; Quinn Taylor, Yvonne’s best friend and partner in the Blue Violet Boutique; and Shelbyville Councilman Carl Foster, whose resolute opposition to Mayor Reyes has mysteriously abated. So, it’s no wonder that when the mayor hires private eye Jonathan Park, the brother of Lila’s boyfriend, physician Jae Park, to investigate the murder, his progress is so halting that there’s plenty of time for the cast to consume the franchise’s signature cuisine and wait for another body to drop, as indeed it does.

The mystery is so-so and the denouement abrupt, but those corny recipes are to die for. Well, maybe not literally.