It's Christmas. It's cozy. It's culinary. It's chaos! It's the fourth book in this fabulous mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron.

Have yourself a merry little . . . murder?

Ricki James-Diaz gets the best present ever when her parents arrive in New Orleans for the holidays. Not only is it a chance to catch up, it’s also an opportunity to jog her mom Josepha’s memory about Ricki’s adoption. The details have always been shrouded in mystery. And Ricki understands why when she learns her mother was blackmailed for years, simply for not wanting to lose her precious daughter.

But digging into the past soon lands the James-Diaz clan in water hotter than a big pot of gumbo! When the woman who extorted Ricki’s mom is found dead at her home, Josepha becomes the primary suspect. Now Ricki has another murder to solve, and tracking down a killer in Crescent City is going to take a miracle.

Luckily, ‘tis the season! And Ricki has all the staff at the Bon Vee Culinary House Museum on hand to help. Can she prove her mother’s innocence and have the case wrapped up in time for Christmas?

My Review: 

Ricki James’ – more formally Miracle James-Diaz’ – life has certainly gotten a bit more complicated (and interesting) in the intervening books in this Vintage Cookbook Mystery series that occurred between Ricki’s first adventure in Bayou Book Thief and this delightfully twisted Christmas murder. To the point where I really want to go back and find out all the deets even if I didn’t need them to enjoy this holiday mystery.

Ricki began her amateur sleuthing hobby the way that many amateur investigators do. In Bayou Book Thief, she was the potential suspect all the circumstantial clues pointed towards. She knew she was innocent, she knew the line to murder the victim not only formed on the right but went around several blocks, and that the NOPD was overworked and understaffed and all too inclined to take the easy way out of an investigation.

As that ‘easy way out’ for them had the potential of a jail sentence for her, she was desperate and determined enough to investigate for herself, leading to the creation of a delightfully quirky ‘Scooby gang’, the discovery of an unsung treasure among New Orleans’ literati, and, of course, the actual murderer.

This Christmas mystery begins as a treat for Ricki – and it ends that way too. But it middles in a victim that, again, no one will miss – but that Ricki’s family and friends will miss least of all. Not that Ricki’s not at the center of the mystery, but at least she’s off the hook when it comes to committing the actual murder. Her parents, not nearly so much.

Ricki has always known that she’s adopted, that her mother Josepha adopted Ricki as an infant before she moved them both to LA and met her husband. Ricki is white, her mother is black, her dad is Latino, so keeping Ricki’s adoption a secret was a non-starter. Which doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a secret involved, just not that.

A secret that doesn’t matter, NOW, to any of the people involved, but was juicy enough back then for Josepha to be blackmailed over it for years. Ricki’s adoption by Josepha, then a young, single black woman, was facilitated by a lie. Specifically, the lie that Josepha was a widow. A lie that was facilitated by someone in the records office of the hospital where Josepha worked as a nurse.

At the time, revealing that lie would have resulted in Ricki being sent into the foster system, and Josepha going to jail. So she paid, and she paid, and she paid until her blackmailer was declared dead.

Ricki’s search for her birthparents, while it hasn’t brought the dead back to life, has brought the knowledge that the dead weren’t dead to both the blackmailer Phyllis Gibbs (the next morning’s murder victim) and the blackmail-ee (Ricki’s mom)

That’s much too big a coincidence for even a beleaguered NOPD to ignore. Considering that both Josepha and Ricki’s dad Luis were caught on the victim’s ring camera paying her a visit in the hours before the woman’s death, it’s a bit too easy for Ricki to see the case forming in all their heads.

Especially when they have a bigger – or at least more attention getting fish to fry in a high-profile thief breaking into, well, pretty much everywhere while dressed in the costume of a well-loved New Orleans children’s icon. Like the local equivalent of Ronald McDonald was out knocking over shops and getting caught on camera while doing so.

So Ricki’s parents are under suspicion of murder. Her boyfriend is under suspicion of the same murder, albeit for entirely different reasons. Her friend-adjacent in NOPD want to solve the murder but the mayor demands that the NOPD’s resources be devoted to the much higher-profile string of thefts.

Leading Ricki – and her eager friends – to get themselves involved in a murder investigation – yet again – even as the younger members of the gang are also caught up in the purely local, but extremely divisive and incendiary – underhanded dealings of their parents in the generational drama that wraps around the selection of the Krewe Queens and their courts for the upcoming Mardi Gras Parades.

Between the thieving clown, the sniping Krewes, and the cold, dead body of a conniving blackmailer, there’s more than enough shenanigans to generate a LOT of chaos in Ricki’s life. It’s going to take a lot more than one night, and the spirits are going to need quite a bit of earthly help, but there WILL BE holiday spirit at the Bon Vee’s Christmas celebration no matter what ‘miracle’ Ricki James has to pull off to get it there!

Escape Rating A: This was just such a ‘right book, right time’ thing that I fell right into it and didn’t want to leave when I was done. (Leaving me with an itch for a good holiday murder to finish out the week!)

It also left me with a desire to read the middle two books in the series, Wined and Died in New Orleans and French Quarter Fright Night, just to find out the details of Ricki’s quest to find her birthparents – AND to experience more of Ricki’s New Orleans and the goings on at the Bon Vee. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t NEED those details to enjoy this story, I just want them. (I’m not quite sure this stands completely alone because I did read the first book in the series, but it definitely doesn’t require reading them all to enjoy this one – but why wouldn’t you since they’re terrific!)

I wrote a LOT in the first part of this to set the stage for the story, and I still don’t think I did it justice. There’s a LOT going on and it IS chaos. But the story goes down easy, like cafe au lait and beignets from Cafe du Monde, complete with clouds of powdered sugar to add to the delicious chaos.

The A plot here is clearly the murder, but the B plot, the Krewe court maneuverings, is fascinating because it gets just a bit into all the frantic paddling going on underneath the swans that are New Orleans’ famous Mardi Gras parades.

There’s also a C and a D, not plots exactly, but situations and history that link the two plots together and dive a bit more deeply into the way the city works – and doesn’t. The C part is the Charity Hospital, one of two public hospitals in the city that served everyone, which means they served those who couldn’t get medical care anywhere else. Conditions at Charity Hospital during Hurricane Katrina and the difficulties and heartbreak of its evacuation were a huge part of the story of Katrina, and the hospital was not rebuilt or reopened after. Josepha was a NICU nurse at Charity, and it’s where she cared for and ultimately adopted the abandoned infant Ricki. It’s a tragedy that lingers, and it lingers over this story as well because it’s an important part of Josepha’s and Ricki’s ‘origin story’.

That D should be an R, for the endemic racism that hangs over New Orleans like a pall, in the present as well as the past. In the past, it’s the reason Josepha had to lie about being a widow in order to adopt Ricki. In the present, the victim’s OBVIOUS bigotry was a HUGE reason why so many of the murdered woman’s victims hated her so much, AND it’s also part of the parental Krewe shenanigans.

In other words, for a story that is simply hella fun to read, there’s also a lot to unpack under the surface if you look for it. And that’s what I loved about Crescent City Christmas Chaos. A delightful cast of characters, a fascinating and twisted murder, an eye-catching distraction, and something to think about after the last page is turned.

I’ll definitely be back to this author’s New Orleans to see what I missed in the series, AND I’ll be looking for the next entry in it when it appears, because this New Orleans holiday mystery – complete with delicious recipes – was the perfect cozy mystery to fill in my holiday reads this season!