PUBLIC ANCHOVY #1

A restaurateur lands the catering job from hell.

Delilah O’Leary, who owns an upscale pizzeria in Geneva Bay, Wisconsin, lives in a lakefront mansion as caretaker to Butterball, the cat who owns the house, along with her Great-Aunt Biz, who’s bitter about losing her home over unpaid taxes. Though she's no reader herself, Delilah is catering Speakeasy Soirée, a 1920s-themed fundraiser to benefit the library. The first problem arises before she even arrives, when librarian Isabel Berney begs her to create a non-pizza pizza for a donor with severe allergies to wheat, cheese, and tomatoes. Arriving with her staff and food on the boat sent by hostess Pam Phillips to carry them across the lake, she learns the entertainment is singer Lola Capone—yes, that Capone family—the mother of Delilah’s dream man, pianist and detective Calvin Capone. Delilah runs into Edgar Clemmons, the outgoing Friends of the Library board chair, who makes several enigmatic statements, gives Delilah two books, and asks her to deliver them, along with an odd message, to her friend Sonya before he apparently falls down the steps and dies. Then Lola Capone discovers an animal hiding in the piano. It turns out to be Butterball, who Delilah fears had a paw in Clemmons’ death. Calvin Capone requests backup, but a nasty storm delays the officers’ arrival. So almost everyone leaves except for a few people who are trapped when a tree falls on the road. Delilah and her crew hope to solve the mystery of the not-so-accidental death before more official reinforcements arrive. The remaining guests have rocky relationships and secrets that lead to another death and a murder attempt before Capone and the wannabe sleuths solve the crimes.

Shades of Agatha Christie in a modern whodunit whose prime suspects keep getting killed off.