Sally Solari first appeared in Dying for a Taste and one of the best ways to learn about a person is by asking questions, so let’s get to know Sal.

What is your name?
Sally Solari, or “Sal” to my pals.

How old are you?
Pretty darn close to forty (yikes!).

What is your profession?
I’m an ex-attorney, now restaurateur. I run Gauguin, the French-Polynesian restaurant I inherited from my Aunt Letta.

Do you have a significant other?
Not in the way you likely mean. But my ex-boyfriend, Eric (a local district attorney), is my BFF, so he’s pretty significant. In the romance department, however, my life is rather uneventful these days.

Any children?
No, much to the chagrin of my eighty-seven-year-old nonna, whose most ardent wish is that I bear her numerous grandchildren before she dies.

Do you have any sibling(s)?
Alas, no.

Do your parents live near you?
My mom passed away several years ago, but my dad lives nearby. And although I love him dearly, sometimes I think he lives a little too close to me.

Who is your best friend?
Besides Eric, that would probably by my buddy Nichole from law school. She lives up in San Francisco with her girlfriend Mei, but we do our best to get together as often as possible.

Cats, dogs or other pets?
After my Aunt Letta’s death, I took in Buster, the mixed-breed pooch she adopted from a shelter in Tijuana.

What town do you live in?
The beautiful beach town of Santa Cruz, California. We have great restaurants (Gauguin and Solari’s, to name a couple), redwood forests, and a fabulous Boardwalk, so come visit!

House or building complex? Own or Rent?
I live in my Aunt Letta’s 1930s-era bungalow, which my dad inherited and now rents to me at a family discount.

What is your favorite spot in your house?
Why, the kitchen, of course!

Favorite meal? Favorite dessert?
Oof. Do I really have to name just one? Okay, I’ll go with my dad’s Linguine with Clam Sauce, with crème brulée for dessert (since I’m a total cream hound).

Favorite hobby?
Cycling. As long as there’s no wind. If there’s wind, it’s my least favorite hobby.

Favorite author?
Do cookbooks count? Of course they do, so Julia Child, hands down.

Favorite vacation spot?
I’ve never been there, but I’m going to say Bologna, because it’s the gastronomical center of Italy so there’s no way it won’t become my favorite spot once I finally get to visit.

Favorite sports team?
The San Francisco Giants! (Baseball rocks.)

Movies or Broadway?
Opera, preferably Italian.

Are you a morning or a night person?
Being in the restaurant business, I kind of have to be a night person, whether I want to or not.

Amateur sleuth or professional?
Amateur, but not by design. I’d much rather cook, but can I help it if dead bodies keep turning up around me?

Whom do you work with when sleuthing?
When I can get him to divulge “state secrets” (i.e., info from the DA’s office about the death I’m looking into), my ex-, Eric, is quite helpful. And lately, I’ve become friends with one of the lead detectives in Santa Cruz, Martin Vargas, which doesn’t hurt, either. But mostly I go it alone; it’s so much easier that way.

In a few sentences, what is a typical day in your life like?
I shove Buster off me in bed, have several cups of strong coffee while I read the morning paper and check my email and texts. If it’s not raining (or too windy), I’ll go for a ten-to twenty-mile bike ride, then shower and I’m ready to face the rest of the day: errands, shopping, then getting to work at Gauguin around three or four o’clock. Depending on the night, I’ll work the hot line or grill station, sautéing Spot Prawns with Citrus and Harrisa or flipping chicken quarters marinated in olive oil, lemon and thyme. If I’m lucky I’ll get home by midnight and unwind with a bourbon-rocks before bed.

You can read about Sally in Murder from Scratch, the fourth book in the “Sally Solari” cozy mystery series, released April 9, 2019.

Restaurateur Sally Solari’s cousin Evelyn may be blind, but she can see all too clearly that her chef mother’s death wasn’t an accidental overdose—she was murdered.

Santa Cruz restaurateur Sally Solari’s life is already boiling over as she deals with irate cooks and other staffing issues at the busy Gauguin restaurant. The rainy December weather isn’t cooling things down, either. So she’s steamed when her dad persuades her to take in Evelyn, her estranged blind cousin whose mother has just died of a drug overdose.

But Evelyn proves to be lots of fun and she’s a terrific cook. Back at the house she’d shared with her mom, Evelyn’s heightened sense of touch tells her that various objects—a bottle of cranberry juice, her grandfather’s jazz records—are out of place. She and her mom always kept things in the same place so Evelyn could find them. So she suspects that her mother’s death was neither accident nor suicide, no matter what the police believe.

The cousins’ sleuthing takes Sally and Evelyn into the world of macho commercial kitchens, and the cutthroat competitiveness that can flame up between chefs. In Leslie Karst’s scrumptious fourth Sally Solari mystery, Sally will have to chop a long list of suspects down to size or end up getting burned.

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About the author
The daughter of a law professor and a potter, Leslie Karst learned early, during family dinner conversations, the value of both careful analysis and the arts—ideal ingredients for a mystery story. Putting this early education to good use, she now writes the Sally Solari Mysteries (Dying for a Taste, A Measure of Murder, Death al Fresco, Murder from Scratch), a culinary series set in Santa Cruz, California. An ex-lawyer like her sleuth, Leslie also has degrees in English literature and the culinary arts.

Connect with Leslie on her website at lesliekarstauthor.com, on Facebook, on BookBub, or on Goodreads.

All comments are welcomed.