The Leighton and Barnes families have had a long-standing rivalry over their respective seafood dynasties in Bar Harbor, Maine. So, our heroine, Hayley Powell, isn’t entirely surprised one morning to find one of her best friends, the brash Mona Barnes, engaged in a physical altercation with Vera, their peer and eldest daughter of the Leighton family. Ostensibly, the squabble is over clam harvesting territory—though, the two women have long fostered a personal grudge against one another since growing up as classmates together in their small island town.

Hayley breaks up the fight but knows that worse trouble is on the horizon when Dougie, one of Mona’s sons, confides in her that he’s planning on asking Olive Leighton, Vera’s youngest sister, to marry him. The couple have been going out in secret and against their family’s wishes for some time now. Dougie wants to surprise Olive with a romantic proposal at Hayley’s restaurant. Despite her misgivings, Hayley agrees to help.

Unfortunately, an even worse commotion than the beachside brawl breaks out when Lonnie, the Leighton family patriarch, figures out what Dougie and Olive are doing. He causes a huge scene at the restaurant, to the embarrassment of his own girlfriend, Abby Weston. Abby attempts to apologize profusely to Hayley, who is almost as alarmed at the scene as she is by Lonnie’s clear ill health.

So when Hayley finds Lonnie’s corpse facedown on the beach several days later, she assumes that his ailing body finally gave way on him. The discovery of an incongruous class ring nearby gives her pause, but it’s not until the Leighton sisters ask her to look into what happened that she becomes more convinced that Lonnie did not die of natural causes. Could a member of Mona’s large family have possibly been involved in helping the old man along to an untimely death?

This was another funny and fast-paced installment of the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery series, as Hayley must carefully navigate not only the fractured family dynamics of people she’s known and cared about almost all her life but also that of their deadly rivals. It doesn’t help that an old flame from her husband’s prior life suddenly appears, igniting all of Hayley’s insecurities. While I’m not usually Bruce’s biggest fan, he did acquit himself well while dealing with both Hayley and his ex. The mystery itself contains a number of sad and surprising twists, though the ending is ultimately upbeat.

There were seven food and seven drink recipes included here, each pair accompanied by excerpts of Hayley’s always charming newspaper column. I decided to try out this one:

Wow Your Guests Easy Clam Cakes

Ingredients

2 cans whole baby clams, drained, and save your liquid

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

2 large eggs, beaten

Instructions

Mix your clams, flour, baking soda, salt, pepper, eggs, and 4 tablespoons clam liquid to moisten mixture. Make 12 equal-portioned patties with the mixture.

In a cast iron skillet add enough vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the pan. On medium-high heat, fry your patties on each side until golden brown about 3 to 4 minutes.

Remove and move to a paper towel-lined plate. Serve warm with your favorite tartar sauce, cocktail sauce, or squeezes of lemon.

Oh wow, I don’t know if it is a typo of some sort, but 2 teaspoons of baking soda is way too much for this recipe. It definitely needed only half a teaspoon, though I’m not sure whether the mistake was made in the quantity itself or in the fact that it should have been baking powder used instead of soda. You could definitely use 2 teaspoons of baking powder here instead of half a teaspoon of soda if that’s what you have available to you.

Regardless, I followed the recipe to a tee despite my misgivings and found this otherwise terrific recipe utterly ruined by too much baking soda, which was all my family could taste in the clam cakes. I’ll definitely be trying this again in the future with the correct amounts/ingredients though, as this does sound like a fast and easy way to make a delicious seafood dish.

Next week, we head to the Midwest to bake up a spooky season treat while figuring out how a pranking and a podcast could combine to go so murderously awry. Do join me!

See also: Cooking the Books: A Shimmer of Red by Valerie Wilson Wesley