#cozy-mystery

#cozy-mystery

When the film director Rian Johnson was a child, he picked up the final book that Agatha Christie published before her death, in 1976: "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case." The novel was sitting on a shelf in his grandparents' sprawling home, in Denver. It had a moody black cover that featured an illustration of the mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot. "It felt very adult," Johnson told me recently. "Very creepy."

The plot heats up when the siblings enter their truck in a competitive cooking show for publicity, only for a contestant to turn up dead, turning the event into a real elimination challenge. With help from their loyal assistant and Beth's best friend Rylie, they follow clues to solve the twisted case before danger strikes closer to home. This blend of mystery and mouthwatering elements keeps pages turning, offering an escapist read filled with banter and surprises.

He recalls being a foster child who learned to stay quiet - "If you make yourself small, maybe the family will let you stay for a while" - until the theater gave him license to be loud and himself. Then he and Loretta take the stage to deliver monologues they had once been denied: hers, a hammy, discarded SVU scene; his, a single line about moldy sausages.