Death al Dente
By Peter King
3/5
()
About this ebook
London’s gourmet detective is contemplating an empty bank account and, worse, an empty stomach, when a phone call solves both problems at once. Over lunch, Desmond Lansdown, world-renowned actor and burgeoning restaurateur, hires the detective for a chef-hunt, sending him to Italy to eat until he can decide which cook Lansdown should hire. It’s a demanding gig, but this detective is never one to shy away from hard work. However, it doesn’t take long for this plush assignment to turn prickly. In between meals, the detective gets a feeling that someone is out to get him. A murdered magnate, stampeding buffalo, and a killer monk are conspiring to ruin his digestion—a shame, because it is vital to eat well when each meal could be your last.
Peter King
Peter King (b. 1922) is an English author of mystery fiction, a Cordon Bleu–trained chef, and a retired metallurgist. He has operated a tungsten mine, overseen the establishment of South America’s first steel processing plant, and prospected for minerals around the globe. His work carried him from continent to continent before he finally settled in Florida, where he led the design team for the rocket engines that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon. In his spare time, King wrote one-act plays and short mystery stories. When he retired, in 1991, he wrote his first novel, The Gourmet Detective, a cozy mystery about a chef turned sleuth who solves mysteries in the kitchen. King followed it with seven more books starring the character, including Dying on the Vine (1998) and Roux the Day (2002). In 2001 he published Jewel of the North, the first of three historical mysteries starring Jack London. King lives in Sarasota, Florida.
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Titles in the series (10)
Dying on the Vine Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Death al Dente Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Spiced to Death Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gourmet Detective Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gourmet Detective Books 1–4: The Gourmet Detective, Spiced to Death, Dying on the Vine, and Death al Dente Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEat, Drink and Be Buried Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Healthy Place to Die Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Roux the Day Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dine and Die on the Danube Express Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Death al Dente
11 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I continue to read this series because of the great descriptions of food. I love to cook, and to read about cooking (I read cookbooks for fun), and the thing I love most about this series is that there's none of this "They ate dinner" nonsense; the exact dinner, often including how things are prepared is lovingly described.That being said- I think some of the other reviews are way off when they trust King to have his facts straight about the details of food and wine. I am hardly an expert, yet in every book so far I've encountered at least one whopper of misinformation; enough to make me mistrust the "facts" of all the other data. In this one, for example, one of the top 3 chefs in Italy was very fussy and refused to serve any parmesan cheese that was not freshly made that day. And.. parm is widely renowned for being an AGED cheese. There can not possibly be anything like fresh-that-day parm. Given the context, he may have meant mozzarella... though that did not seem to me to be working in terms of flavor and texture in the context. There is also a reference to deadly interactions between Prozac and unspecified vegetables; while I have not extensively googled this, I have seen no such connection in actuality. Given, these, I wonder how much more misinformation is in all the "facts" that King cites and that people seem to be trusting to be true.I like learning random facts from novels. Unfortunately, King makes enough stuff up that I cannot trust him as reliable.And then we have the same problem here as with the others; for some reason- unknown- Our Hero is irresistible to the ladies. OK, this time the gorgeous chick seems to be getting paid for it, but still- I think we're looking at a real Marty Stu here.Plotwise- recently, there's been a meme going around that says in part "Getting your protags INTO trouble via coincidence is fine. Getting them OUT of trouble because of coincidence is cheating." King cheats a lot this way.I guess the difference between a good book with an unreliable narrator, and a mediocre book with an unreliable narrator, is partly whether or not the author realizes that the narrator is unreliable. I see no reason to believe that King recognizes this.Still- lovely food descriptions! They're3 good enough to make me want to occasionally read one of these novels.