By Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier

Thank you for the opportunity to spend some time here on Booklover’s Bench! I’m here today to talk about what happened when I combined my love of Virgin Islands cuisine and my passion for writing mysteries. Read on to find out more!

Trust me, we all have one—a culinary tradition that instantly comes to mind whenever the topic of home comes up. Maybe it’s a dish from the region where you were born. Maybe it’s an annual food-related festival centered in the town where you went to college, or where you lived and worked for a while. Maybe it’s a cooking technique or culinary habit that’s prevalent in the area where you live now. No matter what “home” means to you, chances are there’s a food-related favorite that goes along with it!

The prevalence of culinary-themed cozy mysteries only underscores this point several times over. Cozy authors love to plan entire plots around food preparation, recipes, traditions, and celebrations. This means that readers can find cuisine that feels familiar in their favorite stories, but there are also plenty of opportunities to discover dishes and traditions that are new to them.

One of my favorite parts of writing mysteries focused on food is sharing my own culinary customs from the US Virgin Islands, but as a culinary cozy reader, I’ve gotten hunger pangs and cravings reading about dishes from the southern U.S., Ireland, Hawaii, and the Scandinavian countries, to name a few! Whether the plot centers around something as universal as cupcakes or as exotic as cuisine from a country on the other side of the world, the idea of food as a unifying force in a community is a theme that runs through this genre, and one of the reasons why readers just can’t get enough. It’s one of the reasons why writing these stories, at least for me, feels like an exercise in joy and hope.

When writing the short stories that form the backbone of my debut novel-length work, a novel-in-stories called The Bush Tea Murder, I thought long and hard about the culinary traditions I wanted to showcase. I’m a seventh-generation Virgin Islander, and there’s no shortage of recipes and food-related customs that come to mind when I think of home. Luckily, the structure of the book allowed me to include quite a few of them.

As a novel-in-stories, The Bush Tea Murder includes six short mysteries featuring my food journalist sleuth, Naomi Sinclair, as she investigates a decades-old cold case involving a teahouse owner on her home island of St. Thomas. Each of the shorter mysteries brings Naomi closer to solving the overarching mystery of the teahouse owner’s death. The shorter mysteries are also each focused on a Virgin Islands dish or culinary tradition. Some are beverages, like passionfruit juice or maubi. Others are food, like johnnycakes, and some just focus on the way Virgin Islanders have sustained themselves for generations, like eating tropical fruit straight from the tree, and piling three starches on the plate for one meal. Even though the multi-story structure gave me a few more opportunities to highlight local dishes, I still had a dilemma. With so many traditions and treats to choose from, how would I select just a few to write about?

This is where the recipes came into play. A word from each of them served as inspiration for the food, the crime, and the subplot in each of the short mysteries. A short story about a stolen johnnycake recipe…and elevating one’s circumstances, even after a figurative pounding…was inspired by the word “Rise”. Another one about making passionfruit juice and filtering out the truth from the mess of someone’s fading memories, was called “Strain”. Who knew the old cookbooks from my grandmother’s library would inspire more than just fantastic meals?

Something wonderful happens when a mysterious plot and a culinary theme collide—the result is usually a story that’s about more than just the cuisine. Rather, the food becomes a driving force for the narrative and unites the community in the story in a restorative way after the drama of a murder. It links readers to culinary traditions that are joyfully familiar or a new discovery.

And sometimes, it allows a writer to share a dish or cuisine that is special to them—to make their story a table and invite readers to sit quietly and partake.

What about you? What culinary tradition, dish, or event do you think about when you think about home, and have you ever seen this highlighted in a book you’ve read? Answer below in the comments for a chance to win a copy of The Bush Tea Murder. I’ll choose a winner by July 1st!

The Bush Tea Murder

Food journalist Naomi Sinclair never expects a side of puzzles with her passionfruit juice or clues with her coconut tart, but that’s what always happens on her frequent trips back to her native St. Thomas as she investigates the cold case of a bush tea maven. Luckily,  Naomi’s as deft at solving problems as she is at rolling johnnycake dough—which is a good thing, as her island community keeps serving up plenty of curiosities for her to consume. With six smaller mysteries tied together under one big puzzle, there’s no shortage of mayhem, mystery, and mouthwatering VI cuisine.

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Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier’s work has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023, and other anthologies. Originally from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Ashley-Ruth writes mysteries highlighting the vibrant culture of her home. She is a 2023 and 2026 Short Mystery Fiction Society Derringer finalist, a recipient of MWA’s Barbara Neely grant, a 2026 Anthony nominee, and the 2026 Agatha Award winner for Best Short Story. The Bush Tea Murder is her first novel-length work. She lives with her family and teaches first grade in North Carolina.