Murder on the Gravy Train - Hardcover

Richman, Phyllis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786222085 ISBN 13: 9780786222087

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 1999

Synopsis

While researching the dark side of the restaurant business for her new column, Chas Wheatley encounters several murders and a suicide, which plunge her into a world of betrayal, blackmail, and danger

About this title

Review:

Add to the burgeoning cohort of culinary-themed mysteries Phyllis Richman's Murder on the Gravy Train, which provides a second outing for her restaurant reviewer-sleuth, Chas (née Charlotte Sue) Wheatley.

Richman, the restaurant reviewer for The Washington Post, is ideally suited to supply a vivid glimpse of the terrain where big-city culinary and newspaper worlds intersect, and offers a tempting brew of the pleasures and politics of both. Added to the mix is a tale of blackmail, extortion, spying, corruption, and (let's not forget) murder--several times over.

When the chef at one of Washington's most popular new restaurants disappears, Wheatley's curiosity is piqued. No one is forthcoming about his whereabouts, and, almost worse, the restaurant's food, minus the chef, is terribly off. Wheatley takes it upon herself to track down the chef and discovers a widening pool of foul play. In her search, we learn about the illicit side of the restaurant business (readers will think twice about ordering bottled water when they dine out next), and the often-nasty machinations of newsroom life (spying and story thievery). We are also exposed to the bureaucratic yet gruesome grind of a typical homicide department (decayed bodies without ID, for example).

Richman's narrative reads like a semi-autobiographical roman à clef: culinary insiders, real and would-be, will delight in her up-front-and-personal food-world asides. In fact, anyone who enjoys food and foul play--a heady combination--should relish this tale of both, nicely spun out by an author of appetite and imagination. --Arthur Boehm

About the Author:

Phyllis Richman was the Washington Post food critic for more than twenty-three years. She is the author of the Agatha-nominated, bestselling Chas Wheatly books as well as The Washington Post Dining Guide. She's been an award-winning syndicated columnist and food editor and serves on the executive committees of the James Beard Awards and the Julia Child Cookbook Awards. She lives in Washington, DC.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0786222085
• ISBN 13: 9780786222087
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416