When Lucky Jamieson opens up By the Spoonful to host an event with a famous author, she's not expecting a bunch of nuts to descend on her small-town soup shop. But the author's exasperating entourage--from a prickly publicist to a snippy son and his tipsy wife--give fresh meaning to the phrase, too many cooks spoil the broth.

The evening is more than spoiled, however, when it ends with a homicide. When the manner of the murder--as well as another recent unsolved crime--echoes the author's fiction, Police Chief Nate Edgerton realizes he has a copycat killer on his hands. And Lucky hopes that one of her regular customers who has mysteriously gone missing isn't involved. Once again, the soup shop owner will need to stir up some clues to find her friend and catch a cunning killer--before things really take a tureen for the worse...