Corinna has never really gotten on with her parents, particularly since they dropped out of society, joined a hippie commune in Nimbin and nearly killed her as a child through neglect. She was raised by her grandmother and only ever saw her parents when they came to Melbourne, criticised her lifestyle and touched her up for a loan. Her mother has arrived because her husband has left her, looking to find himself sexually which is a scary proposition indeed.

As is usual in the Corinna Chapman books, there is more than one iron in the fire at any one time, and Corinna is kept too busy to solely worry that her randy father is on the loose on the streets of Melbourne in search of free love.

Earthly Delights has received an order from a new customer, a new, kind of freaky customer. They are a new religious group calling themselves the Discarnate Brotherhood. The bread that they order is what is called "famine bread" and is the most tasteless, nutritionless and unpalatable bread possible. The robed brothers who pick up their bread are creepy, there's no doubt about it, but they appear harmless enough.

To round off the fun and games in between baking the daily bread, buns and muffins, a tremor is sent through the tenants of Insula when two of their own, Kylie and Gossamer, are poisoned after drinking diet herb tea. The herbs are sold at one of the local nightclubs that caters to the Goths and denizens of the night. With the aid of best friend Meroe, who also happens to be Wiccan and well versed in all things herbal, Corinna plans to find who the irresponsible distributors are and make them pay.

There is an ominous portent of sinister events to come heralded at the end of each of the early chapters with a few lines that begin "The man who was not yet a murderer…" These few lines, completely out of context with the rest of the story, pricks the ears and sets the antennae quivering, preparing us for the prospect of a little action for the tenants of Insula.

Although ostensibly a mystery with a couple of little conundrums to solve, this is more about the lives of the residents of Insula, the fortunes of Earthly Delights and the progress of the relationships between Corinna and Daniel (her lover), Jason (the heroin addict turned apprentice baker), Kylie and Gossamer (her counter staff) and Horatio (her cat). It's also a celebration of the cats that have been taken as pets by many of the residents of Insula, the descriptions of which sometimes take over the entire story from time to time. This is a cosy mystery that occasionally slips into the Goth scene and dabbles in more than a little with romance.

Along with the increasingly gothic influence that creeps into the storyline, particularly with Corinna dressing up in leathers and bustier to visit nightclubs in the name of solving a mystery, the style of the dialogue has changed. In the first two books, Corinna seemed to speak like a normal human being but in Devil's Food she lapses into a more formal language that wouldn't be out of place in an Ann Rice novel. I found it rather distracting and contrived.

Great pains are taken to highlight the contented nature of Corinna's life, with the comfortable routine of the bakery adding to a feeling of hominess about the story. It's welcoming, breezy and makes a reassuring backdrop to the mystery that takes place around it.

For the third time, Kerry Greenwood has delivered a very enjoyable story that seems to invite you to come back and visit Insula again. Like the earlier books, this one finishes with a couple of mouth-watering recipes for some of the goodies that were created during the story (fortunately, famine bread was not one of them).