Madness in the Mix

Sometimes I think there’s just not enough silliness in cookbooks--intentional silliness, I mean. Of the other kind, there is certainly no shortage. Authors get so wrapped up in exploring the ins and outs and the hows and whys that they forget to have fun.

That’s definitely not the problem with “Desserticide II” (No Crime Unpublished, $12.99), a very informal paperback collection of recipes from the Southern California chapter of Sisters in Crime, an organization of female mystery writers.

It’s an unusual recipe--desserts larded with mayhem--but it kind of works. This is the type of book that has recipe titles like Fatally Fudgy Brownies, Saturday Night Specials (they’re cookies) and Done In by English Tarts. Just reading those titles should be enough to tell you whether this book is your cup of tea.

The recipes are what you would expect--a really high gush factor and, of course, lots of chocolate (oddly, there’s no Death by Chocolate cake, though there is a Death by Turtle). What sets this book apart from other cookbooks are the notes on every other page. These range from tales of “humorous” murders (a crook tripped up by DNA evidence left on a discarded bite of cheese) to hard-boiled quotes (“jealousy is worse than liquor, it biteth like the adder”) to hints for the homicidal (how to feign amnesia).

But are you really ready for Coroner’s Surprise Banana Bread?

“Desserticide II,” edited by Diane Jay Bourchard and Gay Toltl Kinman, is available at some mystery bookstores or can be ordered from Sisters in Crime, P.O. Box 251646, Los Angeles, CA 90025.