Sex and Salmonella

Tory Bauer Mystery #2

by Kathleen Taylor

This sassy mystery introduces readers to Tory Bauer, a savvy 40-something waitress who knows what's cooking in a South Dakota town after murder is served up. When a carnival comes to town, Tory strikes up a friendship with a lonely carnie worker who is later found dead. Incapable of leaving well enough alone, Tory sets out to unmask the killer.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Cozy Mystery, Crime, Cozy

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1996

About the author

Kathleen Taylor is a freelance knitwear designer and a prolific writer. She is the author of the popular book Knit One, Felt Too, and her knitting designs have appeared in more than 50 different magazines. She lives in Redfield, South Dakota.

Reviews

[Lynn]

Sex and Salmonella is the second book in the Tory Bauer Mystery book. The title of the book gives the reason that Tory Bauer in drawn into the mystery of the book. Tory Bauer is a 40 something, divorced waitress who works and lives in Delphi South Dakota. She is asked by her not so loved cousin to check up on a carnival that is coming to Delphi. Her cousin has food poisoning and Tory realizes that she will travel to this town with a married man that she is secretly having an affair with. So she agrees to go and is drawn into the mystery.

This book does not fit perfectly into the cozy mystery genre. Tory is a amateur sleuth but some of the language and the affair she is having is outside what a cozy mystery usually entails. This book and the series so far is just plain funny and entertaining. Kathleen Taylor has a very good wit. The books reminds me a little bit of Joan Hess or Janet Evanovich due to the humor.

The characters are just delightful and show their flaws. The town on Delphi South Dakota is a character in itself with the harsh weather. I feel like I discovered little gems of books that are almost forgotten from the nineties. They are now available on Kindle and I think in paperback too. If you like your mysteries with humor, great characters and a distinctive location, you should enjoy this series.

[Hannah]

This book exceeded my expectations. I grabbed it because it was a mystery set in South Dakota and who knows anything about that state?? :) It was great. It really featured the state in such a way that really highlighted the quirks without turning the state into a caricature.

Tory was a human. She wasn't perfect and she wasn't awful. I have gotten to the point where I dislike mysteries where the main character is an alcoholic/druggie with a failed marriage and bad debt. Tory is a waitress so she isn't rich, but she is paying the bills.

And the way that she stumbles into the mystery and solves it was very natural feeling. It wasn't super far fetched. I took a star off because it dragged in the middle. I was ready to get going.

But I do plan to find and read another in the series. Though I would note that Goodreads post this as #2, when it actually is #1.

[Cait S]

I really loved the first book in this series but I think I've grown as a person since then. Because the raging misogyny was not tolerable this time. DNF at chapter 3.

[Harry]

Authors are encouraged to “write what you know.” And Kathleen Taylor knows plenty about small town life in rural South Dakota. Despite the title, this book has very little to do with either subject, but it is catchy alliteration. I guess it would sell better than “Murder on the Midway.” This is the second book out of six in the Tory Bauer mystery series. For those of us who might read these books out of order, I wish Taylor would have given us Tory Bauer’s back story. As a heroine, Tory does not have much to recommend for herself. She is a widowed (from a cheating husband), overweight, 40-something waitress without health insurance who lives in a trailer with her cousin in rural South Dakota. Despite this setting, Tory seems to be a fish out of water, with a distaste for country music and agricultural caps. Yet she is drawn to a furtive relationship with a married man, when a perfectly eligible (and rich) bachelor is interested in her. I assume that Taylor is leading us in the direction of the latter.
Tory is a hapless sleuth where things just happen to her and where she misuses her powers of deductive reasoning to try to catch the murderer. As a mystery writer, Taylor skillfully leads us by the nose to one conclusion, only to have it snatched away by another misleading conclusion. Overall, it was a fun read.

[Genevieve]

This book was so long and stretched out. It was about half way before the murder even took place. The author seemed to delight in describing everything that happened in every little detail. There were some good characters. I love Del. She doesn't care what others think and does what she wants. As for the rest to say that the rest of the book is so described none of the characters feel well defined. You have the cranky boss, the married boyfriend, the longing for but never seen as a boyfriend best friend. They are all sterotypes that doesn't seem to be defined past that. Our main character seems silly, cries at nothing, tries to mother one kid while saying she doesn't like kids and is really just not that wonderful. The story line was long the ending was okay and kind of took me by surprise but that was the best part about the book.

[Ryan Hoffman]

This is the second installment in the Tory Bauer mystery series by Kathleen Talyor. Like the last book it's more similar to Janet Evanovich and one of her Stephanie Plum Books then it is to a traditional cozy. In this book Tori decides to go to a carnival with the married man she's having an affair with. And just like the first book murder ends up following her there.

[Charlotte]

oh god. could I give this less than one star? why did I read it? I blame vacation & the beach. actually "read" is a loose term--the middle 100 pages are particularly unreadable, and the ending makes little sense. yes, there is sex, and salmonella, so the title does not false advertise. but let me suggest to any future publishers that these two things should never be combined, even for the sake of alliteration.

[Suzanne]

Reading this for "Small Town" Mystery Theme. Kathleen Taylor has a sharp sense of humor that I really enjoyed. It took a good half of the book to get to the murder, but in retrospect I see that there were tons of clues being built in that I missed. I liked the ending since I didn't see it coming at all. I'll definitely finish this fun series.

[Mary Kenyon]

This is the first book I read in the Tory Bauer Mystery series and I see that I am reading them out of order. So I will start at the beginning because these books are little gems. I compare her style to Janet Evonovich for fun and intrigue. And they are set in South Dakota, my home state.

[Sue]

Cute and light.

[theknitsmith]

A pretty good mystery about life in small-town South Dakota but with more murders.

[Kay]

This book was well-written and had a good story, but the mystery was not as complex as I like. I would like to read another in the series.

[Pat]

Good.
Carnival murder.

[Marcie]

Takes awhile for the crime to actually occur but it was a fair read anyway.