I recently read a mystery called Devil's Food, one of a relatively new series about a baker. The character was charming and I thought the author did a really good job of integrating a fairly large cast, making nearly all of them feel like real people who were part of the main character's world.

I would definitely read another in this series, but I'm not sure this particular book really worked for me. It took me a little while to figure out why.

Okay, the main character, Corinna, was born to hippie parents in a commune of some sort, neglected and abandoned by them, adopted by her grandmother when she was five, and estranged from her parents for pretty well her entire life. In the first-person narrative she remarks that they show up once in a while so her mother can insult her personally and viciously, as well as berate her for the choices she makes in her life. The father stands by like a lump. Then they cadge money off her and disappear.

In this story the mother, Starshine (do you suppose everyone has the urge to wish her good morning no matter what time of day it is?) shows up at Corinna's bakery, announces that the father, Sunlight, has left her to chase younger women, and demands that Corinna find him for her.

Okay, I believe I've posted about this before: characters must have a reasonable reason for engaging in their investigations. In this case, Sunlight is an adult who apparently vanished of his own free will, so obviously the police are not interested. But Corinna? I will buy someone looking into the disappearance of a person they care about. I will buy someone looking into the disappearance of someone they do not care about, if they're trying to help someone else they do.

In this case, Corinna is indifferent about her father and despises her mother. I do not particularly buy her motivation. More seriously, if Corinna doesn't really care whether she finds the old hippie, why should I?

In terms of her relationship or lack thereof with her parents, it's possible I'm suffering for having not read the first two books in the series, but I do not get why her parents are apparently so angry at her for existing. Their interactions stray well into the realm of "look at this poor character, unjustly oppressed for no reason!" which is not a ploy I ever respond well to.

Corinna says at the end that she's glad she finally had "a confrontation with her mother" that cleared the air. I read the book. I see no confrontation. There is one spot where Corinna tells her mother she plans to continue to live her own life, but there's no back and forth, no discussion, nothing. It's just an attack by Mom, followed by a near non-response by Corinna.

They never talk, they never try to understand each other--and I am only complaining about this because here's Starshine, right, and here's all this baggage Corinna says she has with her--and it's used to absolutely no dramatic effect.

How about Sunlight? Well, as Corinna follows him around he gives some sign of being a creepy old man having no success picking up younger women. Then he gets beaten up for reasons I'm not clear on but I accept these things happen when you live on the street, and then he ends up with a miserable cult that hates fat and rejects all forms of joy. I do not get how he went from craving the fleshpots to joining this bunch. Since Sunlight has exactly one line in the whole book, we never do get an explanation for his thought processes. At the end of the story, he and Starshine reunite and leave--my impression is that he's so miserable trying to look after himself that he might as well let her do it for him again, but I do not share Corinna's apparent impression that her parents' love is rekindled. There's no sign of it.

There are other plot threads--Corinna, who describes herself as fat, seems to battle the cult to protect other fat people from them. But the cult is cloistered--the only way they interact with fat people is if fat people come to them. I do not buy her rationale that average folks are so terrified of becoming fat that they'll be easy prey for the cult, who avoid all fun and live on spoiled turnip stew (sustaining, but not palatable, food.) They're crazy all right but they're not exactly threatening.

There's another plot thread about trying to stop some evil herbalist who sells "weight loss tea" that nearly killed two of Corinna's young employees. Except it turns out there's nothing noxious in the tea, it's just the two girls drank about five times the recommended dosage about three times as often as they should have. I mean, they might as well have been drinking strong coffee at the same dosage.

There is a smuggling thread that turns out to involve smuggling things that are neither illegal nor dangerous, which could actually be readily obtained locally anyway. It's never clear why the smugglers bothered.

There is a running thread about someone who "is becoming a murderer." Don't worry, he never does.

I may have figured out why this story doesn't work for me: the stakes are far too low, and not only objectively, but to the character. All the issues she battles in the story could either be ignored, or would be harmless if you don't abuse them, or would go away if you said "I don't care about you any more than you do about me, get lost."

As reasons to sleuth nothing here is compelling. As I say, the character and her friends are likable, but there's no urgency around much of anything in the story.

On second thought, maybe I don't need to read another book in this series after all.