A Healthy Place to Die

By Peter King

While relaxing at a Swiss health spa, the detective finds the treatment can be deadly.

The gourmet detective realizes that the Alpine Springs health resort is not a typical spa somewhere in the middle of his first cocktail. Where other retreats promote abstinence, exercise, and bland food, this quiet little Swiss chalet preaches indulgence. Guests are allowed to eat, drink, and smoke as much as they want, and exercise is strictly optional. For this epicure, it is paradise -- and it may also be his doom.

He has come from London to speak about fine dining, but while here he fully intends on enjoying himself. One night he arranges a tryst with a fellow expert, a beautiful young woman named Kathleen Evans. They are deep in the woods, about to begin enjoying themselves, when something knocks the detective out cold. When he comes to, Kathleen has vanished, and the detective begins to suspect that life in the Alps is not as healthful as it appears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784086480

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. 

Reviews for A Healthy Place to Die

[thornton37814 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the titles in the Gourmet Detective series. The Gourmet Detective takes Carver Armitage's place as a lecturer at a Swiss spa. Mysterious things begin to happen. He encounters one of the guests in the Seaweed Forest, but then her body is gone. When he inquires, he learns she has "checked out" of the spa and was taken back to the airport where she presumably boarded a plane for the United States. Later other mysterious things occur, making him wonder exactly what is happening at this resort. He has to determine which guests and employees can be trusted and which might be involved in the cover-up. The descriptions of the food made me hungry. The mystery itself was pretty typical for most cozies. I feel that there is not a strong enough identity of the main character the Gourmet Detective. I do not remember running across his true name anywhere in the book. While it may have appeared in earlier books in the series, new readers to the series, like myself, were somewhat in the dark. The lack of knowing his name made it more difficult to identify with the amateur sleuth.