Do You Read Culinary Mysteries?

[StudentChefEclipse]

Another thread made me think about this. I tend to like light, often funny mysteries, and those with non-professional detectives. These are perfect reading for a brain that's gone spiraling around real-life too much.

My favorites are King's The Gourmet Detective, and Fairbanks's books on a traveling food writer with bad taste in murders.

So, am I the only one who reads these things, and is also a foodie? What do you read along these lines, if anything?

[TarteTatin]

I haven't read those that you have read.

However, try Michael Bond's, Monsieur Pamplemousse stories.

Monsieur Pamplemousse and his dog Pommes Frites solve "Red Guide" (supposedly Michelin) food mysteries in France. Very light and very funny!

Michael Bond wrote the kids books Paddington Bear, but these are little paperback adult books that are great. Monsieur Pamplemoose goes to Provence, etc. etc.

[akur23]

By no means are you the only one. We even have a reading club:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/culinarymysterylovers/

There's Diane Mott Davidson (whom I met at the National Book Festival a couple of years ago); Tamar Myers, Susan Wittig Albert, Joanne Pence, Joanna Fluke, Nancy Fairbanks, Mary Daheim, Lou Jane Temple, Phyllis Richman, the Nancy Pickard/Virginia Rich series, Laura Childs and Katherine Hall Page. That's just off the top of my head, in addition to Michael Bond and Peter King.

[suzilightning]

i also read Diane Mott Davidson, Tamar Myers, Susan Wittting Albert and Nancy Pickard/Virginia Rich(though if you like dogs DO NOT read the Baked Bean Supper Murders) and Katherine Page Hall.

course there is always Bourdain

[andiesenji]

Jo Fluke just emailed me a few days ago to remind me about her new book and that she will be at The Bookhouse, a book store at 17048 Devonshire in Northridge, for the launch party.

It is close to home for her and she has had her prior books launched there. I met her a few years ago, for launch of her second book and took her some of my candied ginger and a jar of pickles.

I had already picked up the new title as soon as I saw it. I like the way the stories are written, I can't figure out who dunnit till the end....

I love to visit The Bookhouse anyway, they have a lot of old cookbooks, my kind of store....

I like all the culinary mysteries. There are a couple of others besides the ones on your list but I can't recall the names offhand......

[Carrot Top]

Let's not forget Rex Stout...

[wawairis]

Let's not forget Rex Stout...

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I love Rex Stout's books. Fritz is always whipping up something that sounds absolutley delish! It's amusing when Fritz and Nero Wolfe argue over ingredients. The books also have excellent twists and turns in the plots.

Lawrence Sanders used to write mysteries with sensational descriptions of food. Check out "The First Deadly Sin". Captain Edward X. Delaney and his "wet" and "dry" sandwiches. Sanders died a few years ago, and I sorely miss his books...

[BeJam]

I'll throw out, as I did on the other thread, John Lanchester's "The Debt to Pleasure." Not a traditional mystery by any means. In fact I didn't even know it was a mystery until I was more than half way through the book. I highly recommed it. It was written somewhat as a memoir based on seasonal menus.

[razzar]

I think I would include Dorothy Sayers' "Montague Egg" stories, too. Not strictly "food" related, but Egg was a wine saleman and that usually figured in to the stories.

[StudentChefEclipse]

Good gods! How *did* I misplace Rex Stout? Nero Wolfe starred in some of my first mysteries, never mind my first food reading. *Goes off to reorganize the mystery shelves in the "library"*

[Lady T]

Two series which aren't about food but feature drool-worthy descriptions of characters' meals would be the Robert Parker 'Spenser' novels and the Kate Shugak/Alaska series by Dana Stabenow.

I always wind up collecting 'em if they're good mysteries first and include great dinner descriptions. Or lunches. Or breakfasts. Or snacks...

[bcm]

There is an English author named Janet Laurence - I believe her

culinary herione's name is Lyle but it's been a while. She doesn't seem

to be writing any more, and her books were difficult to find even

when she was but found her to be something like the British

version of Davidson or Pence.

BTW, Davidson has a new book due out on the 19th of this month.

[Dave the Cook]

erm.

OTOH: How to Cook a Wolfe, by maggiethecat and Dave the Cook.

And let's not forget Inspector Maigret.

[Gifted Gourmet]

erm.

OTOH: How to Cook a Wolfe, by maggiethecat and Dave the Cook.

And let's not forget Inspector Maigret.

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Many thanks for the link, Dave! Never would have found it without you! Missing TDG ...

[russ parsons]

as a food writer and a mystery reader, i'm afraid i find that most of the "culinary mysteries" leave me unsatisfied. but there are mysteries with great food in them. the first two that come to mind are the relatively new (in this country) series from the sicilian author Andrea Camilleri. he's got 4 that have been translated so far, and more to come. they are superb, both as mysteries and for the food he mentions (who wouldn't want a housekeeper who leaves squid stewed in its own ink in the fridge when she leaves?). i also like john harvey's charlie resnick books on both counts, though the cuisine is of a much more informal nature than camilleri's. think really sloppy sandwiches with beer. but the combinations sound great. there is also good food in donna leon's brunetti series. and, of course, my best buddy phyllis richman's chas series. and, of course, you can't miss pamplemousse ... they are practically meringues.

[Richard Kilgore]

I agree about Camilleri, Russ. I read one, perhaps the first one translated, last year. I'll have to track down the others.

I also like Nicholas Freeling, who Tony Bourdain as written about here.

And not mysteries, but Jim Harrison's fiction often has food as a significant aspect of his narrative.

[cakewalk]

Sometimes I read recipes that seem like culinary mysteries to me ...

[Rebel Rose]

I really enjoyed How to Cook a Tart by Nina Kilham. I thought it was hilarious and there were no red herrings--there are clues on every page.

In the first paragraph, a cookbook author finds a dead floozy on her kitchen floor. I wish I had recipes for some of the dishes described in this book. Well, except of course, for the 'piece who resisted.'

[rlibkind]

What about the fine home-cooked meals Inspector Maigret relishes. Or Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" (albeit no mystery, and a short story to boot). Dahl has quite a few stories of an eerie, though not necessary mysterious, nature that revolve around the dinner table.

I second "Debt to Pleasure". As for "How To Bake A Tart," I was bored and put it down after only a dozen or so pages.

Edited October 9, 2004 by rlibkind (log)

[Carrot Top]

Sometimes I read recipes that seem like culinary mysteries to me ...   

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Me too. Wandering all over the place in search of...what???

I had an idea (which is mesmerizingly un-doable) of writing a thriller...there would be a first-person protagonist who throughout the narrative would be making ongoing attempts to kill in a number of novel ways...but the subject to be killed would be unnamed till the end.

Who did the subject turn out to be?

It turned out to be the extra pounds that make my tummy round rather than totally flat.

Impossible premise in the first place, after the age of nineteen... but still I long to find a way to commit that murder....

[jhlurie]

Now I like a detective with a whisk in one hand and an eclair in the other as much as the next person, but I kind of have the same problem with them as I do with most of these "cozy" mysteries (yes, that's the actual name of the genre, apparently). They're a bit too cutesy and eccentric. I need to be in a cutesy mood, which unfortunately happens less and less these days.

Stout's another thing entirely. I can read that almost anytime--to the extent that I've probably read ALL of them about five times in the past 20 years.

I will say this... if anyone here knows a heavy hitter in this field like Diane Mott Davidson, I'll PUT myself in the proper mood and sit down and read some, if we can hook them into a Q&A session or something. Just PLEASE don't ask me to read any books with Cats as protagonists. That might be a bit too much...

[bloviatrix]

there is also good food in donna leon's brunetti series.

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I'll admit it, I drool when reading Leon.

Just finished reading Leslie Forbes Waking Raphael. The description of food eaten is equally fantastic. I guess it has something to do with books set in Italy.

So it proceeded, bowl by bowl, flavour by flavour, as, with the gravity of a judge discussing arcane aspects of the law, Procopio unfolded to her the antique origins and alchemical powers of Sicilian ice-cream.  Much later, when story and history, art and artist had emerged and become indistinguishable, as they often do in Italy, Charlotte would recall that hour quite clearly, and retain in her memory the final and most haunting flavour of all. "Gelsomino...jasmine, the taste of all the loves we had and lost -- or might have had. . . So many "o"s -- you hear them?'  Barely a whisper this time: Gelato di gelsomino'  And down her throat passed a perfumed concentrate of the Arabian Nights.  Intoxicating, a heady, bruised-flower fragrance carried on a hot summer wind.

[Dave the Cook]

I will say this... if anyone here knows a heavy hitter in this field like Diane Mott Davidson, I'll PUT myself in the proper mood and sit down and read some, if we can hook them into a Q&A session or something.    Just PLEASE don't ask me to read any books with Cats as protagonists.  That might be a bit too much... 

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Lou Jane Temple is a member here.

[Andrew Fenton]

I'll throw out, as I did on the other thread, John Lanchester's "The Debt to Pleasure."  Not a traditional mystery by any means.  In fact I didn't even know it was a mystery until I was more than half way through the book.  I highly recommed it.  It was written somewhat as a memoir based on seasonal menus.

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I'll second this recommendation; though I agree that, while there's a mystery (in the sense of a secret) at the core of the book, it's only a "mystery novel" in the way that Pale Fire is. Probably the best description would be a combination of Nabokov and Brillat-Savarin. Very dark, very funny.

[StudentChefEclipse]

I took all these lovely recommendations to The Poisoned Pen, a marvelous local mystery/suspense bookstore Saturday and came away with a LOT of new books.

Sad to say, M. Bond's Monsieur Pamplemousse is out of print in America, but I bought the second British omnibus edition and numbers one and three are on order.

Can't wait to read! (...and have a little snack...)