The Unwatched Kettle

“One of my favorite under-discovered writers is Maryjane Elizabeth Jones, author of the new Phantom Cooks mystery series. Wish I’d written it!”
- Marjory Sorrell Rockwell, The Underhanded Stitch

The Unwatched Kettle is the debut novel in the new Phantom Cooks mystery series by Maryjane Elizabeth Jones. Here, three friends in Danger Rocks, Maine, start up a small meals-to-go catering business, but their enterprise hits the shoals when an encyclopedia salesman’s thumb turns up floating in their potato leak soup. Marcia Lambert and her two girlfriends, Peggy Doyle and Jean Turlington, must solve the crime in order to save Phantom Cooks as well as their own gooses. The clues are puzzling, but with the assistance of Native American park ranger Benjamin Bullmoose and the hindrance of local police chief Montgomery Knoble, the three housewives manage to solve their very first murder.

Maryjane Elizabeth Jones loves to cook and share her recipes almost as much as she loves to write. She got the idea for the Phantom Cooks mysteries from a friend who actually started a catering business called Phantom Cooks, home-cooked meals delivered directly to your doorstep. After reading a Janet Evanovich mystery, Maryjane decided to try her hand at the craft. You’ll be glad she did. Maryjane has two cats, a parakeet named Tweets, and protects her grandmother’s recipe for bread pudding as if it were the Crown Jewels. These days she divides her time between the New England and the sandy beaches of Southern Florida.